AnkoSensei
by Lady Briett
Summary: When Mitarashi Anko comes across a crying eight-year-old Uchiha Sasuke, she feels like she should do something. And that something is to teach him.
1. Chapter 1

In one world, when Mitarashi Anko heard crying from the cemetery she was walking by, she ignored it.

But in another, she decided she would go and see who it was, just to make it wasn't anyone she knew.

Our story begins here in this second world.

Anko looked around the burial ground, with its crooked headstones and winding paths. She had been in here before, to mourn the loss of friends and teammates…those who had had bodies to be buried, at any rate. Hopefully whomever it was she heard crying was not one of the few people she had left. She hated seeing tears.

It probably wasn't anyone she knew, but it didn't hurt to look. As she rounded the corner of the dusty lane, she saw a boy. A very small boy, with dark hair and dark clothes. Peering at the headstone, she could make out:

Uchiha Fugaku Uchiha Mikoto

968-1008 973-1008

Age 40 Age 35

Loving parents

Devoted to each other

Ohhh dear. That meant this child must be Uchiha Sasuke. The remnant of a once great clan. Anko was an orphan herself, but her parents had died when she was just a baby, in the Second Shinobi World War. Somehow it seemed like Sasuke was worse off, having his taken from him when he was already somewhat grown.

As she well knew, traumatised children do not usually grow up to be productive members of society. Especially in a village like Konoha, who's support system for such children was something along the lines of "Buck it up, kid." And considering the way Uchiha tended to be, Anko would not be terribly surprised if Sasuke wound up dead in some foolish quest to kill his brother. She herself had spent long hours thinking up elaborate plans for revenge-oh, who was she kidding? She still did that. Although she had managed to get herself together before she did anything too drastic, there was still fear in quite a lot of the other tokubetsu jounin's eyes when they saw her.

Anko felt like she should do something to help the boy. Betrayed by someone he loved most…but what _could_ she do? She was nineteen and not terribly beloved by the administration.

"Are you watching me?," asked Sasuke suddenly, glaring at her.

"No."

"Really," said Sasuke, disbelief evident in his tone.

"Really. I barely even know who you are, kid."

Sasuke got up, dusted off his shorts, and walked to right in front of Anko. He stared up at her and tried to look angry.

"You've been standing there for ten minutes," he pointed out. "Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm…Mitarashi Anko." He looked so cute with his hands on his hips like that! The fact that she was about a foot taller than him didn't help.

"Then what _are_ you doing?"

She wanted to retort that it was none of his business-, but couldn't help but saying,

"I heard someone crying. I..uh..wanted to make sure none of my friends were in here."

Sasuke didn't look like he believed that but didn't comment on it, merely sighing.

"Then do you, like, want something, dango-san?"

"Do….you?"

Anko figured he'd start crying again or something, but he replied.

"Yes. Power."

"Ookay then." Then she had an epiphany. _She _could teach Sasuke, and hopefully avert another crazed Uchiha killing people madly in the future, plus maybe get a loyal minion to help her destroy Orochimaru! What did she have to lose?

"I could teach you, Sasuke-san."

"Why would you? You're a chuunin, a jounin? Surely you have better things to do?"

"I…uh…want to pass on my mad skillz to the next generation?"

Sasuke wasn't sure whether or not this was a good idea. On the one hand, she seemed kind of strange and Mother _had_ always said not to talk to strangers. On the other, he couldn't learn the skills necessary to kill nii-_Itachi _by himself, right?

"Okay."

"Great! I'll make you into…something, all right."

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the cemetery. Its gloomy atmosphere was starting to get to her brain. Sasuke looked like he wanted to protest but said nothing. After twisting, turning, and almost running into a brick wall, they were in Anko's favourite place in Konoha, a small park that was nearly always empty. It had gnarled trees and tall unkempt grass, ensuring it was harder to find someone within it.

"So, I guess I should introduce myself, eh? I'm Mitarashi Anko, tokubtetsu jounin. I like dango, ninja udon, and dramatic entrances and I can't stand…people who take advantage of others"

Sasuke, his hair still somewhat out of place, sighed and said quietly. "I'm Uchiha Sasuke. I like tomatoes. And I don't like…failing."

"Sometimes one must fail to succeed," said Anko. Where had she heard that, again? Oh. From…_sensei.. "_So, why don't you tell me what you already know how to do?"

"Why?" Sasuke was kind of annoying, Anko decided. But also adorable.

"So I won't try to teach you anything you already know," she replied, exasperatedly.

"Well…uh…I can do Katon: Goukakyu no jutsu, I guess…and the Cloak of Invisibility Technique…and uh…that's it."

Anko was kind of surprised he already knew how to _shoot a giant fireball out of his mouth _at eight. Which also meant he probably knew all the hand seals. She knew the Uchiha liked to start early but didn't they realise that forcing children to learn to be killers at such a young age was a bad idea? Granted Sasuke wasn't _that _much beyond early-Academy-student level, but he wasn't the heir: Itachi could probably do that much at four.

"You've got a long way to go. Hmm…let's start with…Henge." It was one of her favourites. So simple, but people often forgot to check for it. It was one of the more difficult e-ranks, but it was still an e-rank. Ahh, the fun she'd had pretending to be her classmates!

"Henge?" asked Sasuke curiously.

Anko grinned, and a blur of hand seals later, she looked just like the boy in front of her. He blinked, startled.

"Is-is that a genjutsu?" he questioned, looking faintly confused.

"Nope! It's a ninjutsu. I really am a 4'4 brat right now-or at least I appear to be."

Sasuke swiped at the air above her head, as if to prove her wrong. But there was nothing. Then she was back to herself .

"I presume you already know the hand seals, yeah? The ones for this are Dog-Boar-Ram. Go on, try it."

Try as he might, Sasuke could not become an image of someone else. Repeating it over and over again, until finally, he glowered at Anko and said, "Is there something you're leaving out, here?"

"Well, uh, you need to constantly emit chakra while maintaining a clear picture of the person you're trying to become in your mind…" she said, remembering her own Academy teacher saying much the same.

"Why didn't you say so?" he said, looking sort of angry.

But even with this, he still couldn't perform a Henge, even a bad one. He grew more and more frustrated.

"Sasuke-kun, you just can't get everything right on the first try." Perhaps she should have started with something other than Henge. "It took me months.".

"I _will _be able to Henge by tomorrow. I _know _I will." And before Anko could say anything, he had run off. She sighed. Maybe she just wasn't fit to be a teacher. Or maybe Sasuke just wasn't fit to be taught.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Everybody makes up their own date system for Naruto, so here's mine: It's based off the number of years since the Rikudou Sennin was born. Sasuke, Naruto, et al, were born in 1000. Right now it's 1008.


	2. Chapter 2

Anko looked in the direction in which Sasuke had run off. She really, really hoped he didn't wind up in the hospital with chakra exhaustion because of this. He was the sort of person who would do that, and she'd be blamed and that could _not _go well. The village was understandably quite sympathetic to him right now and she wasn't very well liked by them anyway.

Well, there wasn't really anything she could do. She could run after him, but she wasn't his mother. And she was _starving_. Putting thoughts of the determined boy out of her mind, she envisioned some yummy fried prawn and warm barley tea. Was there anything a deep-fryer could not solve?

* * *

><p>In the morning she went to Training Ground 3 to work on her senbon throwing skills. No chuunin hospital messenger had appeared at her door, so either Sasuke was still to exhausted to speak or had managed not to overwork himself. Was she missing a senbon? Maybe that Genma had stolen one. She wasn't very good with senbon, but she was good with throwing dango sticks into patterns, and they were basically the same, right?<p>

"Good morning, Mitarashi-san," said someone from behind her, as she managed to miss the target for the sixth time. Anko turned and stared into the green eyes of…of…a person she didn't know. That was odd. Strangers never came up and talked to her unless they were very, very drunk, due to her reputation. It was double-edge sword: sure, it kept the creeps away, but sometimes she would like to talk to someone other than Genma or Ebisu.

"So, do you think this is good enough, Anko-sensei?" asked the stranger, grinning slightly.

"Sasuke?" she said, disbelieving. There was no way he had managed to master the Henge in a day!

"Yes." With that he slid back to his own form. "It took me all night, but I did it!" He did look quite tired.

"Awesome, Sasuke-kun!" Then, realising she was supposed to be something resembling a Reasonable Authority Figure, she added "But sleep is important, you know."

"So, what now?," he asked.

As much as Anko would like to teach him the e-ranks instead of delving into boring stuff like theory, she knew she shouldn't, or he would probably overexert himself for real this time. A brief thought entered her head-that it was not mastering the Henge that he really wanted, but something to distract him, but she pushed it out of her brain, because it was depressing and Anko didn't like depressing.

"Well, um, how about why Henge is useful?" She really should have done this before she told him the hand seals for it, but what's done is done. Sasuke pouted at this, and it was so cute Anko wanted to coo at him, if she was the sort of person who cooed.

"And how you can improve yours?" she added. He looked even more disappointed at this, presumably because he had spent all night practicing it and now he was being told it wasn't good enough.

"Surely its use is sneaking into enemy territory?" he said, sounding far older than eight.

"Well, yeah. If we _had _an enemy right now-so now it's mostly for sneaking into places you need to get to because of a mission…but also if you don't want to be found."

He looked rather more interested at that. Anko wasn't sure if she should be concerned.

"Well, I have pretty distinctive hair, don't I?" And a pretty distinctive outfit. Hey, it was useful for a quick distraction. She then Henged into a brown-haired girl in slacks and a tunic.

"But now, I'm a nobody. And if you ever need to sneak _out _of enemy territory it helps too. But you can't rely on Henge for everything."

"Why not?"

"Well, I still _sound _like me, don't I? That's why your Henge earlier wasn't the best-you'll still sound like a kid, even if you look like an adult. Plus, eventually you'll dispel it, either because of the, uh, mental strain, or because you're asleep."

"So how is it useful?" asked Sasuke. _'And how will this help me kill Itachi?' _he thought.

"Because if you need to sneak into somewhere, and you can't put a non-chakra based disguise together, it's the best method. And you're going to learn this eventually _anyway, _so you might as well get it out the way now." Anko was rather pleased with how…teacher-y she sounded.

"I'm going to learn this eventually?" he asked, confused.

"Sure. In the Academy. E-rank justsu-not very flashy, but everyone knows them, 'cause they're so useful."

"Oh.," he replied.

Then Anko realised that he had probably not eaten anything since breakfast yesterday. Taking him to lunch seemed kind of…awkward, but considering this was Konoha, he was probably living alone with no one to make him anything. And she really doubted he could cook. She could barely make anything more complicated than a grilled cheese sandwich.

"Hey, kid, you want to go get some food, and we can talk while we eat?"

Sasuke wasn't sure what to say. His mother, who had a collection of parenting magazines dating back a decade and knew all of them by heart, had told him never, ever, accept food from a stranger, but…Anko-sensei seemed pretty nice, and surely an honourable ninja of Konoha wouldn't do anything to him. Besides, a hot meal sounded very good right now. He didn't know how the oven worked and the microwave was broken. And fireballs are not really a good substitute.

"O…kay," he said, somewhat uneasily. Hopefully she would not drag him by the arm. It was still a little sore from that.

Much to his dismay, she did wind up dragging him by the arm, although thankfully a different arm. Soon they were in Konoha's bustling centre. She looked at all the stalls and shops, before finally settling on one with a brightly patterned awning with a wooden door. Inside there were hard wooden chairs and plastic tables. Anko sat down at one with a flounce and Sasuke followed.

"So, Sasuke."

"Yes?"

"Nothing. I just like saying your name. Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke." She smiled widely at him. He rolled his eyes.

"What do you want?" she asked, pointing to a chalkboard behind the counter.

"Whatever," he said, shrugging.

"I don't think they sell 'Whatever' here," she said, but got up and ordered regardless.

"So…Anko-sensei…"

"Yes?" she said.

"Nothing. I just like saying your name. Anko-sensei Anko-sensei Anko-sensei."

Parroting her, was he? Anko wanted to say something because it was kind of annoying, but this was probably the first time he'd made something resembling a joke in a while.

"So, what do you know of the other E-ranks?" she asked finally.

"E-rank jutsu, the most basic jutsu, are known by all ninja due to their simplicity. The ones generally taught are the Kawarimi, Henge, and Bunshin," he recited.

"I see you looked that up yesterday. Wait, you _have _a book that talks about E-rank techniques?"

He shrugged. "My great-aunt was a teacher and she left all her…materials in my house."

Sasuke sounded so _serious_. Was he always like this? Then again, the few times she had talked to Uchiha Itachi, he was far worse.

"So, uh, I guess the next step is teaching you those," she said.

"Why, though?" he replied. "Couldn't you just use Shunshin and Kage Bunshin instead?"

"You could, but they take more chakra. Plus Kawarimi is cooler than Shunshin." He looked faintly incredulous at that, so she followed it up with "It's more shocking when the person you were throwing kunai at is suddenly a log, you know?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **well, first I seem to have forgotten a disclaimer, so here's one: this is not mine. Nothing here is mine. Cool? Cool.

I'm not sure if I'm rushing it, or if Anko and Sasuke are too OOC, but I'm not really the best writer…I tend to think my fan fiction and rarely put it to paper [or pixels as the case may be] so it's tailor-made for my amusement. I'm sure the Itachi-gets-reincarnated-as-Sasuke idea, or the Deidara-goes-back-in-time idea, or the Sasuke-pretends-to-be-Naruto's-boyfriend idea would intrigue somebody, but they're too embarrassing to write, plus I tend to skip to end because the end is better ^-^.

I guess what I'm trying to say is…constructive criticism is appreciated.


	3. Eine Pause Machen, Sasuke

**A/N**: Look! I can write a story with more than two chapters! I know this seems filler-ish, but I wanted to give some more background on Anko_, _plus it provides a good set-up for the next chapter.

Again, constructive criticism is appreciated. I know I don't really get quotation marks, have no idea what kind of place you buy onigiri in, and often rush things along.

* * *

><p>Anko then got up to get their onigiri, and set down the plastic tray on the table. She picked one up and threw it in her mouth, savouring the taste-delicious, as usual.<p>

"So, will you teach me how to do the other E-ranks, then?," asked Sasuke, eyes glinting…madly, she thought at first. Then she realised the lights in the place were always too bright.

"Well, uh…," she began, through a mouthful of rice. "Yes, but not right _now._"

"Why not?" he demanded, looking more resigned than resentful.

"You could get chakra exhaustion, y'know, if you stayed up all night practicing, and that would be, like, really really bad," she said, swallowing her third rice ball. Umeboshi was more sour than she usually liked, but it was good on occasion.

"What?" he asked, faintly confused. "Nii-_my brother_ does-_did _that a lot."

"Because he's an idiot," snapped Anko. Even if she hadn't been trying to inspire him to get revenge on Itachi so he would help her get revenge on sens-Orochimaru, she still would have told him that. Granted, Itachi did have more chakra, but she'd seen the Uchiha genius practicing, for hours on end, when she wandered home from the bar. Mostly kata, but physical exhaustion exacerbated chakra exhaustion.

"Or mad," murmured Sasuke, so quietly she barely heard. Anko decided to ignore that.

"And you don't want to be an idiot, do you?" she said, peering down at him.

"No…"

"I didn't think so. And sleep is, uh, important because…it gives your body a chance to heal and for you to…uhh…rest, and otherwise, you'll…uh..owe sleep debt?" The academy teachers had given them a longer reason why, with fancy, unpronounceable medical terms generously thrown in, but she had mostly forgotten it.

"But…tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yeah. If I think you won't collapse halfway through. So go to bed, okay?"

* * *

><p>She followed Sasuke back to the Uchiha district; under an invisibility genjutsu, of course, so she wouldn't come across as…creepy. It was the only genjutsu she knew, but it was quite useful. And…and…there he was, taking off his shirt, and pulling pyjamas out of a drawer…she left then before it got too weird. Anko all but danced out of the district. Sasuke had listened to her! Someone had taken her advice when they didn't have to! Few trusted her, anymore. Perhaps Genma would buy her shochu and drag her to the poker tables, perhaps Ebisu would grin at her bad jokes while they downed ale in his apartment, but they weren't really…friends. But for a long time they had been the only thing she had. Now…maybe, that would no longer be the case.<p>

"Eh, eh, Anko-chan, I didn't realise you were in the habit of walking into trees now," said a laughing voice. She looked up to see Hatake Kakashi, looking lackadaisical as usual. She glowered at him and stalked off, but he followed behind her.

"Do you want something?" Anko asked.

He leered at her and leaned in closer.

"Well, 'course, Anko-chan, not that you would give it to me." Then, dropping his voice to just above a whisper, he said, "I saw you coming out of the Uchiha district. I don't think you have any business being there."

'How did he know?' she thought, fuming. 'And why does he _care?_'

Twitching almost imperceptibly, she replied, "I was merely passing through, Hatake-san. Thank you for informing me I was about to walk into a tree. I…must…train." It was said in Anko's best impersonation of the dull tone Sasuke tried to use.

He blinked, unused to her being so formal, but moved aside regardless. Tossing one last annoyed glance in his direction, she walked determinedly back to the training ground. She _would _achieve semi-competency with senbon!

* * *

><p>It was a bright morning, birds chirping. Anko wished they would just <em>shut up<em>. She was _so _not a morning person. After breakfast (cereal bar, cold coffee, burnt toast) and a quick shower, she managed to drag herself to the Mission Office. She had spent perhaps a _bit _too much on alcohol as of late and really needed the money a B-rank would provide, especially seeing how high the utility bill was this much. The desk chuunin gave her a routine mission, escorting a minor noble back to the Land of Grass. Bodyguard missions were usually C-rank, but the noble thought his rivals had hired mid-level nuke-nin to eliminate him, bumping it up to a B, plus he was willing to pay for a B-rank. It was easy and fairly low-danger, and Anko had done missions of a similar kind hundreds of times before. The man she was guarding, slight and young, had said he needed to finish his business in Konoha before they left, and told her to meet him at the gate in two hours.

She left the mission office whistling. There were a lot of downsides to being a tokubetsu jounin only somewhat trusted by the government, but one of the few upsides was never having to go on A-rank missions. Sure, they paid more, and it wasn't as if she didn't care for Konoha's best interests, but she preferred being alive, all in one piece, and a reasonably high degree of mental stability.

* * *

><p>Anko was at a small convenience store, buying instant udon and granola bars. Some ninja only ate ration bars on missions, which had the advantage of needing no preparation and having all essential nutrients, but had the disadvantage of tasting like cardboard. She was walking out of the store, when suddenly, a small, dark-coloured blur ran into her. Anko was going to chastise the child for not looking where he was going (not that she was much better) before it said,<p>

"Morning, Anko-sensei!" with an entirely too chipper voice for eight thirty in the morning. The purple-haired woman smiled down at her student. He seemed bouncier today. Probably the effect of not pulling an all-nighter.

They walked through the crowded streets together. By now all the stores were open, and travelling merchants hawked their wares loudly.

"So are you going to teach me the other e-ranks today?" asked Sasuke. "I went to bed extra-early, I really did, and finished that book of my great-aunt's!"

Anko stopped in her tracks. She had completely forgotten about that! It was so…strange, to have to remember things like that. She usually went out for drinks with either Genma or Ebisu on Friday, but they were often on missions themselves and didn't really mind when wasn't there.

Seeing her silence, Sasuke added, "I _know _that you're not supposed to teach them all at once and stuff, but I know I can do them! I did that Henge, didn't I?"

She rubbed the back of her head, slightly embarrassed.

"Eh…eh…I have a mission, kid. So I can't do anything with you today," she said, slightly sheepishly. Anko really needed the money though, and paying the rent a hour before it was due never ended well.

"I understand," he said, stiffly, and looked down. "How soon until you'll be back?"

"Fortnight or so," she said. Why did he keep trying to affect that creepy emotionless Uchiha tone? He wasn't very good at it, and besides, it didn't work very well for an eight year old.


	4. Chapter 4

Sasuke wandered back to the Uchiha district, lost in thought. Anko-sensei said she had a mission. Had she forgotten about him? Flitting visions of his bro-_That Man _promising to show him how to throw a shuriken, and always postponing, always busy with his training, his team, his missions. Anko-sensei didn't seem like the sort of person who would do that, though. She was cheery and chipper, and hadn't she called nii-_Itachi _an idiot yesterday? Then again, she was an adult, too, and he was just another kid, small and unnoticeable and always underfoot.

He kicked dust, angrily. Weak, that's what he was. Not worth anyone's time. She was only bothering with him because….oh, right. "To pass her mad skillz to the next generation." Whatever that meant, anyway. Why hadn't she asked to be given a genin team, then? She said she was a "tokubetsu jounin", hadn't she? And he was fairly sure they were in want of instructors. Stories of a jounin given a team every year but who never passed one had been common amongst cousin Inabi-san's rants about, among other things, the state of art in Iwa, Konoha's lack of a good zombie defence plan, and Shimura Danzo's inability to express humour in a form other than bad puns.

Absently, Sasuke noticed it was cooler in the shade he was currently walking through, Wait, what? The path one took back from the marketplace to his house was bathed in sunlight. _Always. _Was he lost? Looking up, the answer seemed to be yes. The buildings here were dingier and a mash up of time periods and styles; a rickety wooden one that had a very faded uchiwa on the side swayed slightly in a gentle breeze, and several others seemed to have been thrown up by people who didn't know what they were doing, with poorly-laid mortar and boards nailed incorrectly. They cast ominous shadows on him, and abruptly he realised he was in the part of town Mother had always told him not to go. Sasuke felt very small and alone. But a few days ago if he had wound up here, he would have run the other direction, but now-but now-he put his hands together, making the signs for a Henge. Now he wasn't a boy, weak, small. He was tall and sinewy, with slightly protruding teeth and dark clothes, a half-remembered image of one of his father's genin teammates. It was nice to pretend, to pretend to be strong, to pretend to be someone who was something more than insignificant.

It was a dirty neighbourhood, full of refuse and grit. Earlier in the week he had considered leaving his house and renting an apartment somewhere with the monthly stipend Hokage-sama said he would be given. Now he realised that the only place he would be able to afford would probably be somewhere in here. Sasuke had a sudden, inexplicable urge to run home as fast as possible, turn on all the lights and appliances, and sit down at the kitchen table with a housekeeping magazine.

With the longer legs afforded to him by the Henge, he was out of there far sooner than he ordinarily would be. Dark and dank sharply gave way to fields and soft grass. Most of Konoha's food was supplied by nearby villages, but they had a few farms, in case of a siege. It was somewhat on the outskirts, but so was the Uchiha district.

"I'm home," he called out softly, as he removed his sandals, having dispelled his Henge. He knew there would be no response. He knew there would never be a response ever again.

The house was just as he had left it in the morning. Cereal bowl still sitting on the counter, book still where he had dropped it in the living room. It was depressing. Nothing would change unless he changed it. There was no Mother to put all the plates in the dishwasher, no Father to ensure books went back on the shelves they belonged. No Shisui, knocking into things left and right and grinning all the while, no Iriko-baa-chan, sweeping away the dust while tsk-tsk-ing at her daughter's poor homemaking. Not even Tatsumi-oji-san's cat, Hanako, weaving her way into everyone's house and pouncing onto furniture. _That Man _had taken them all, even the pets. All except him.

'_I hope Anko-sensei doesn't die too' _he thought. Maybe she was kind of forgetful and a little creepy and a bit too carefree, but she was…she was all he had now, wasn't she? Salty tears were slipping down his face, now, as he remembered, remembered screams and flashing metal and red, red, red. He fell to his knees, unable to support himself any longer.

"WHY!" he screamed, screamed until over and over until he was unable to scream. Then he pounded his fists against the tatami until he was unable to feel his hands. He deserved to die. He was a failure, lacking honour, disgraceful, weak, weak, weak, weaker than old women and infants.

Maybe he should just give up now. How could he ever hope to beat his brother, the prodigy, the genius, the strongest, the best? Sasuke knew there was a tanto in the study, a relic of the war. It would be for the best…

"_Because he's an idiot."_

Sensei's voice reverberated in his brain. Maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn't weak…

No. No. He was. Everyone thought so. Father thought- _had _thought so. And father knows best.

That brought fresh tears to eyes. Father had rarely praised him, rarely had time for anything other than his work, but…but…he loved his family, loved them more than anything. Sasuke knew it. Everyone knew it. So why…why? Why would one need to test his capacity against those who already acknowledged him as great? Sobs choked the air. It weighed down on him, stiff, heavy, _silent_. So silent. So still. What was there left to live for?

'_Making sure this never happens again' _whispered his mind. That was it. He couldn't bring his family back. But he could make it so no one else would ever be in his position again.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **I cried while writing this.

Mabidiso asked to see a chapter from Sasuke's point of view, and I thought it might be interesting to write one.

(also, there is, to add a little light-hearted-ness, a 50's sitcom reference in here. cookies for anyone who can find it!)


	5. Chapter 5

Hit…hit…miss…hit…nuke-nin down! Anko did a mental victory dance. She had managed to knock someone out with senbon! Genma had given her a crash course last night on which parts of the body to aim for to incapacitate but not kill.

The man next to her, a minor noble by the name of Fukuzawa Hayao, seemed shocked.

"I didn't even see you use any weapons!" he said, amazed.

"Senbon," she replied, mouth curving into a lazy smile. Even the civilians were impressed with her!…or, more likely, he was just unaware how incorrect her technique was.

If she had been a bounty hunter, she might have dragged the nuke-nin's unconscious body to his home village for ryo-Suna, judging by the scratched headband-but she wasn't a bounty hunter, she had a mission, and outlaws of this level were rarely worth it. To ensure he didn't come after them when he woke, Anko pulled a kunai across his neck, severing most of his blood vessels.

Fukuzawa-sama shuddered at that. When she got up to join him once more he seemed warier, constantly looking over his shoulder at her. Not that she minded; clients were better alert.

The mission was, like she expected, easy. His rivals had hired nuke-nin, like he thought, but they were far below her level. They were two days away from the Land of Grass, a day ahead of schedule. The man she was guarding was quiet and content to look at papers-cloth and metallurgy contracts, he said when asked. It gave her time to think.

Right now Anko was thinking about Sasuke. He was sooo cute! And sooo unhealthy. Anko could tell there was something off. Which was fairly understandable, considering, but it worried her. A small part of her brain asked if she was really the best person to be teaching a traumatised little boy, but she pushed it away. It was better to have someone than no one (_isn't that why you loved sensei so much? _whispered a traitorous voice in the back of her brain), wasn't it?

Oh, there she went again. She'd thought she'd outgrown doubting herself at every opportunity. Perhaps not. Sasuke would have a teacher one way or the other eventually, as a genin, but she was nearly positive it would be Hatake Kakashi. He was the only person loyal to Konoha with a Sharingan now, and certain parties would certainly argue Uchiha Sasuke needed to learn how to use his. Anko thought it was a crutch, herself. Either way, Kakashi, who would _not _be happy at being forced to actually pass a team, would be about a good a teacher for Sasuke as-as-Itachi himself would be. He was living a decade in the past, shunned the company of others except when forced, and knew nothing about children. Although perhaps that last part was understandable, seeing as he had never been one himself.

Okay, maybe Anko really, really, _really _didn't like Kakashi. But still!

* * *

><p>A day and a half later, the purple-haired woman was back on the same road, this time by herself. The client had been escorted back to his home successfully, with no injuries for either her or him. Now that she was not with a civilian, she could run and get back to Konoha in less time than it took to get to the Land of Grass. Ordinarily she would take to the trees, but right now she was in the middle of a meadow. It looked like it had been a farm, probably abandoned during the last war. A dusty, distant house confirmed that idea. Eventually this would be covered over with the bamboo forests the area was famous for, but now it only had a few trees and stalks, none of which would be able to support her.<p>

She was actually…excited about returning to Konoha, for once. She was always _happy _on the way back, of course, looking forward to the prospect of a soft bed and good food, but it had been a while since she knew…since she knew there would be someone waiting for her. It was a nice feeling.

Suddenly Anko had a thought that scared her. What if Sasuke found out about her past and…no, no, no. He was _eight. _Eight year olds didn't understand that sort of thing, did they? As long as she was nice, surely he wouldn't care. But what would other people think? Being the last Uchiha-and thus the last person in Konoha with genes for the Sharingan-he would no doubt be carefully watched. There were still quite a few people who looked at her with suspicion in Konoha, and some would certainly cry she was corrupting him.

'_Happy thoughts, Anko. Happy thoughts._' She consoled herself with thinking of her last bottle of shochu, a good book, and nice relaxing bath. Anko never understood how some people did many missions back-to-back. Sure, the one she just did was easy, but doing it four times in a row would get to anybody.

* * *

><p>In three days she could see the gates of Konoha from her perch in the trees. Home sweet home.<p>

She jumped down and approached the gate. Border patrol looked bored, as usual. Nobody would even think of attacking it now, when it was at its strongest. Four years ago, when Konoha was still recovering from the Kyuubi attack and the war, there were hopeful nuke-nin trying to get in every other day, but now the guards did nothing more than check papers.

The guard closest to her grinned cheekily. It was Tanaka Yujiro, a fellow tokubetsu jounin she knew somewhat. She grinned back, and he opened the cast iron gate for her. She was glad to be back. The oppressive silence of the meandering paths leading out from Konoha, with birds and butterflies as her only living company, did not sit well with Anko. She loved Konoha's cheery atmosphere, raucous inhabitants, and brightly coloured shop stalls. Anko shuddered to think what living in somewhere like Iwa or Ame would be like.

Should she go seek out Sasuke immediately? The _most_ immediate thing to do was filling out a mission report, of course, scrawled in hiragana, but next..? Eh, probably best to put her mission payment in the bank. It just wasn't smart to be carrying around thousands of ryo.

Having done that, Anko walked over to the Uchiha district. It was set off a little from the rest of the village, fitting the clan which once resided in it. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted someone in one of their training grounds. It had to be Sasuke; no one else would have cause to be here. He seemed to be throwing shuriken…badly. That wasn't good. If you got into the habit of throwing them wrong, it was very difficult to learn how to do it properly. Anko wasn't super-awesome with them, but she was…proficient.

Silently, she padded over to where he was standing.

"Hello, Sasuke," she murmured. "Want some help with your shuriken there?"

He turned around, looking somewhat surprised.

"ANKO-SENSEI!" he squealed, happily. Then, after looking around, like he was trying to make sure no one heard him, he said in his normal voice, "Uh…okay."

She grinned and patted him on the head.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **well look at that! A _fifth _chapter! This is officially the longest thing (at 6000-and-so words) I have ever written. I know, not much happened here, but you can't have all action and no explanation. Well, I suppose you could, if Michael Bay wrote Naruto fanfiction.


	6. Tandem

A/N: Changed the previous chapter to Anko having gone to give her report before meeting Sasuke. It just seemed better.

And yeah, I know I shouldn't have taken this much time to update. I'm sorry about that. Right now I'm forcing myself to sit at my desk and write and not do anything or get up except go to the bathroom.

Without further ado, may I present: Tandem! (I've decided to start naming all my chapters in foreign languages to be fancy. This one means "Finally" in Latin.)

* * *

><p>Sasuke was happy. No, he was not happy. He was brimming over with barely contained glee.<p>

_Someone was finally teaching him how to throw a darned shuriken. _

He had asked everyone! Nii-_Itachi _was always too busy with training or missions. (If he had been a normal brother, Sasuke would have thought he was just brushing him off to go be with his friends, but Itachi had no friends except Shisui, who was just as bad.)

Father said he was too weak to learn yet. (And if he had been a normal father...ahh, perhaps best not to go there)

Mother always had _things _to go to: mah-jongg club, book club, garden club. (This was sort of legitimate: the ladies who ran them all seemed to be 85 year old retired jounin who fought in the First World War, and would get very angry if you missed a meeting and you weren't sick or dealing with a death.)

All of his teachers were not ninja at all. (Which made sense: there's no reason to employ a ninja to teach six year olds how to read and to do arithmetic.)

Shisui-san was creepy, Inabi-san was scary, Yoshiro-san was mean. And so on.

But finally!

Anko-sensei smiled down, and re-adjusted his grip, for roughly the fifth gajillionth time.

Or maybe only the fourth gajillionth. Why couldn't he do this? Maybe he was too weak.

"It's important to learn how to throw these properly, you know," she said, mock scolding. "If you don't, you'll be _ruined forever, _and they won't even let you _be _a ninja, you'll have to go...I don't know, _farm _or something. "

"R-really?" That was scary...what...what if he couldn't do this right, ever, and, and then...

She twitched. "No." Then she blinked. "Hmm, maybe if I showed you the right way…"

The purple-haired woman then snatched all the shuriken out of his hands and threw them at the target. They all hit the bulls-eye. It was...was..._really awesome. _

He stared in idolatry. "Wo-wo-_wow_." He could barely get the words out.

She gave him back the shuriken. Sasuke knew he wouldn't be able to throw all of them like she did, but maybe...three? No, two would be best...fine, one.

And it flew in a black blur and...and...it _hit_. Not...exactly in the centre, but far closer than he'd ever been able to get before.

"Great, Sasuke!" said Anko-sensei, grinning. She twirled a circle in the soft grass, warmed by the midday sun. It had been a wonderful day before: sunny, pretty bird song, a light breeze: and now it was perfect. (Or as least as perfect as he'd be able to get ever again.)

Pushing _those_ thoughts out of his head, he threw another...and another...and another, until there were ten shuriken in the target, all cloistered around the middle-one or two had actually hit the centre, although it was kind of hard to tell.

And Anko-sensei was grinning. She seemed...seemed..._proud. _

Hunh.

Mother and Father had rarely been; it was always _Itachi _this and _Itachi _that and _why did his mind keep on going back to the same things? _Images danced in his head, of blood and blood and blood and a dark voice whispered "Anko is just _testing her capacity_" and he was shaking and why and why and why and why and no and no and no would he ever get this to stop happening?

"Are you alright, Sasuke?" asked Anko-sensei, breaking him out of his nightmare.

"Y-yeah. 'M fine. Really," he managed to force out, breathing slowly. She looked at him oddly like she didn't believe him,

"Welllll," she said, slowly, "Now that I've ensured you actually know the right way to throw a shuriken, we can move onto something else, although of course you'll have to continue practicing with them, but that's boring. So...uh...hm...how about...uh...say, do you know anything about anatomy, Sasuke?"

"Uh.…" What did that mean? "A little."

"A little's better than nothing I suppose. Not much use to a shuriken if you don't know how to hurt someone with it, eh?"

Oh! So that's what it meant. "No..."

"You could of course, just throw it wherever-they hurt no matter what they hit." She unconsciously rubbed the back of her neck. "But that's a waste, and, uh, sometimes you need someone…different levels of injured, I guess? Like you don't always want to kill someone right away, 'cause, 'cause…it's just more fun to fight, sometimes. But sometimes you do want your opponent out of the way immediately, and you've got to know what you should hit for that…and what's okay to hit while sparring, and so on, and, uh, yeah."

Sasuke listened attentively. Sensei was so _smart! _Knowing him, he'd probably just throw a shuriken at whatever seemed easiest or would result in quickest death. Or both. (But did that apply to….? Yes, yes it did, he didn't deserve a quick death.)

He looked up, and saw two Ankos. Did he hit his head and not realise it?

Oh. A clone. Kanade-chan had learned how to make one six months ago and for three weeks everywhere you looked there was a black-haired girl with pink ribbons running about. (And then those pink ribbons became red.)

"So! Since this is the sort of thing you really have to practice on an actual person and we can't do it the way I learned how to, on captured prisoners of war, my clone, the _beau_tiful Anko here (the clone waved) will be the dummy.

Just as he was about to ask if that would hurt her, a man appeared. He was either a jounin or a chuunin, judging by the flak jacket, and had a hitai-ate slanted over one eye. "How could he not walk into things?" wondered Sasuke absently.

"Mitarashi-san," he said, in an angry tone. "_What are you doing_?"


	7. Vogelscheuchen und Wörterbuch

**A/N**: OMD, two chapters in one day! Next thing you know, I'll be updating _Drowning from Within, _finally finishing the first chapter of _Deidara's Adventures in Wonderland_, and actually writing that story about Itachi I keep thinking about! (Eh…probably not.)

I hope nobody's annoyed with the POV switching, but I feel it's necessary for the story.

Oh! Yeah! And! 日本国語大辞典 (Nihonkokugodaijiten) is the Japanese word for dictionary! Remember that, it'll be important later!

* * *

><p>Anko gasped. What was Kakashi doing here? Surely he, as an imperious jounin knowing more jutsu than every single genin in the village put together, would be plenty busy.<p>

He seemed to want an answer, though. And Kakashi was someone she didn't want to see angry.

"I'm teaching Sasuke about ana-how to throw a shuriken," she said at last.

"Really?" he asked, voice dripping with suspicion.

"_Yes_," interjected Sasuke. "Who are you, anyway?" He glared upwards, arms akimbo.

Kakashi blinked. This was clearly not a situation he was in frequently.

"I am Hatake Kakashi," he said, in a voice about half an octave deeper than his usual one.

"You do realise that means nothing to me, don't you?" said Sasuke, rolling his eyes. "Perhaps this would be a better question: Why are you here?"

Anko was mentally cheering for him. She didn't know exactly why he was here herself, but she had a suspicion. This would probably all end with her in front of ol' Utahane Koharu and Mitokado Homura, explaining that, no, she was not trying to corrupt the last Uchiha, and no, she didn't harm him in any way. (The Hokage didn't have time to deal with that kind of thing, so he delegated it to them.) She couldn't get away wi' nuthin', could she?

"I…am…here to…ensure…that Mitarashi-san is not doing anything she should not be," he said, flatly, standing ramrod straight. Gone was the mildly threatening but still casual Kakashi he'd been the last time they had crossed paths. In his place was a ninja of the highest calibre, known far and wide and considered S-class by any classification. Actually, hadn't she seen an ANBU a few months ago with gravity-defying grey hair? (And on the ides of June, hadn't she seen another ANBU about her height with long black hair skulking about the Naka Shrine?)

"What?" asked Sasuke, confusion evident in his voice.

Kakashi sighed, clearly not sure how to explain what he meant to an eight year old.

"Well, Sasuke-kun, you see, Mitarashi-san has done some things before, and some people think that…"

"How dare he!" thought Anko. "I've done nothing! Nothing at all!" But before she could step in to defend herself, Sasuke spoke up. "You're not giving me a proper answer 'cause I'm a kid, aren't you?"

"Well, I…" began Kakashi.

"Well _what_? Why do all adults start all their sentences with "well" anyways?" He was quite loud now and looked rather quite angry.

"Uh…as I was going to say…I don't think you would be able to, uh, comprehend her history…stuff you've probably never heard of, lots of words you don't know…"

"O REALLY?" shouted Sasuke. He ran off.

Anko gasped. Where was he going? Why was he leaving her alone with _Kakashi? _Okay, he was eight, but still.

"Now look what you've done!" she said, glowering.

"It's for the best, Mitarashi-san," he replied stiffly. No more _Anko-chan_, she supposed. She wanted to punch him. Did she dare…?

"Now, let us get to the matter at hand. You should not be associating with Uchiha Sasuke."

"Who are you, my mother? Aww come on Ka-ka-shi-saaaannn, what do you think I'd be _doing _with him?"

"Yeah," added the clone, who up until that point had been silent. "Get your mind out of the gutter." She rolled her eyes.

"_Mitarashi-san_," he said in a serious tone. "The…council does not believe that you would be the best teacher for him. Assuming you actually are teaching him, of course…"

She blinked. Why would the council get involved? They were the ones who would actually hold a hearing on such a matter, but only the Hokage could order someone to investigate it in the first place.

"Oooh, are you just a tool of the council now, Kaaaaakashi-saan? How…how…_cute_." Okay, maybe she should be more formal, but it was hilarious.

He was twitching now and looking quite irate. "_Mitarashi-san._ This is a civil matter, and such responsibilities have been delegated to them. Due to your…background and possible, ah, seal influence, they have determined you should not be teaching Uchiha Sasuke."

This rather confused Anko. Koharu liked her, kind of, and Homura was barely awake half the time. The only time she'd met him he'd half-smiled, sleepily, and slurred out, "'Ave a nice day, Mitarashi-kun." And although she could understand, sort of, the "background" part, but "curse seal influence"? Three different doctors had proved she wasn't under its control. It was on her file in the Konoha Archives and everything, and they knew that. So then…?

"I'm not under the influence of the curse seal," said both Anko and her clone at the same time.

In a manner and tone which had to have been rehearsed, he replied, "That is debatable. As the only inhabitant of Konoha with the gene for the Sharingan, it is important he not be corrupted."

That…that…crow-perch! Why did the council care only for Sasuke because he had useful genetics than because he was a person? And since when was _Hatake Kakashi _this formal? Even on missions he was ridiculously uncaring. This was a bit suspicious. Scratch that, this was _really _suspicious.

Suddenly, _something_ hit Kakashi in the head. Not expecting it (and coming from his blind side) he was knocked to the ground due to its weight. Anko gaped. Someone had managed to get a hit on the Copy-Nin!

Turning, she saw Sasuke smirking. He…?

Then she looked at what Kakashi had been hit with. It was a book. A book that read 日本国語大辞典 (Nihonkokugodaijiten)

"I wonder if he can comprehend _that_," he said, with a self-satisfied smile.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** well you wanted a beat-down, didn't y'alls? I could have written that, I suppose, but I think this is funnier. And this story needs funny.


	8. L'Hôpital

A/N: well look it's a new chapter! That's what, three new chapters in less than a week? I guess this is my way of making up for going a month without updating. o_h_. I published a new story, and I'm not trying to go and get you to read it or anything but-okay, yes, I totally am. And yeah this is kind of filler but I can't write more than a thousand words at a time, so you'll just have to wait for something more interesting to happen. However, there should be a nice injection of "actual storyline" soon, assuming I can find the lancets.

* * *

><p>Sasuke was staring in shock. His hands were trembling<p>

"Is…is he _dead_?" he asked, his voice shaky. "I…I….didn't mean to…

"No," said Anko definitively. "Just unconscious." Then, after a moment of contemplation, she added, "Or faking."

"Oh….oh. That's…good," said the boy, looking into the clouds. "I guess…I guess I was…just…angry."

"I understand," said Anko, nodding in what she helped was a teacher-y and not a sociopath-y manner. She had certainly lashed out (and in far more violent ways) before. Although…"You can't just _do _that, though, every time you get mad. It looks bad." She was totally past the point where she threw kunai at random people who glared at her, she really reeally was!

"Uh…now what?" asked Sasuke.

Anko grinned. She suddenly had an idea…a lovely, terrible, idea. "Hey, remember I was going to teach you about how to best throw shuriken at people? Well, now we've got someone else to practice on."

"No," he said, crossing his arms. "He's already knocked out, how could that be useful?"

Her heart had skipped half a beat at the first part and returned to ordinary at the second. If Sasuke turned out to be one of those insufferably _noble _ninja…okay, okay, Kakashi was a fellow Konoha-nin. Why did she hate him again?

"Good point," she murmured. "As much as I'd like to, we can't just leave him here." She picked him up and placed him over her shoulder-in the proper way for carrying unconscious individuals, mind you. It would look rather suspicious if he had any injuries that could not have been caused by a dictionary, and only so much could be excused by jostling.

"Well, I guess I'm off to the hospital," Anko said, walking towards the centre of town. Then she noticed she could not hear the sound of another set of footsteps, and turned around. Sasuke was still standing there, talking to her clone, who was gesticulating and talking about-the tibia, maybe?

"You…coming?" she asks tentatively.

"No," he replies, shrugging. "I…don't like hospitals."

"Why?" asked Anko. Surely he hadn't seen anyone die in one yet? This question, however, appeared to make him quite right angry. So much so that she could feel a very small amount of killing intent. (Not enough to terrify her on its own, of course, but…some of seemed not aimed towards her but inwards. She didn't want to consider why.)

"I. just. _don't, _okay?" he said glaring.

Ten seconds later it hit Anko like a bucket full of bricks. He…would have woken up there, wouldn't he have? On…July 13th, according to the rumours circulating around she'd heard. _Oh_.

"Okay," she agreed, not wanting to go any further down that path. "Uh, maybe my lovely clone can teach you while I'm gone. It shouldn't take too long, the hospital isn't terribly far away." He nodded a little, and she set off once again towards the centre of the village.

It was not long before she was in front of Konoha General Hospital. The building was rather odd looking, as new wings and bits were added without the old being removed. A wooden part in a traditional style was next to glass with brick on the other side. But inside it was all the modern, with only the best technology-Konoha, being one of the foremost villages, could afford the latest and greatest out of Snow Country.

Anko was about to put Kakashi's name down on the form provided by the nurse when suddenly…

Suddenly…

He was standing in front of her. Her mouth dropped. He…what _purpose_ did faking that serve? Unless…he enjoyed annoying her as much as she enjoyed annoying him.

Seeing her stare, he said, "What, did you really think I could be knocked out by a kid with a dictionary? Come _on_, Anko-chan! Your lack of faith is disturbing."

And now he was casual and Kakashi-ish again. Strange. His compartmentalisation ability must be quite good, Anko decided-either that, or he had got hit just hard enough to jar him back to normal.

"Then why did you let me carry you _all the way _to the hospital?"

"I was quite disorientated and dizzy-for all I knew I might really have needed to see a medic." At this he snatched the form out of her hands and began to fill it out himself. "It's always smart to have head injuries checked out, no matter how minor they may seem."

"I don't need a_ lecture_," she said, through gritted teeth. "What I need to know is what you were _doing_."

"That's classified," he said in a flat tone. "But-uh-thanks for, uh, bringing me here."

"You're _welcome_," Anko forced out, before spinning on her heel and going back to where Sasuke was. However, she took a slightly longer route, so she could have more time to think. She wondered as she wandered. How had the council found out so quickly? ANBU only reported to the Hokage. Was it to save face? And for what cause? As she walked, there was a small rustle of leaves above, making her look up-normally, that was not suspicious, but with her guard up as it were…there was nothing and nobody, of course, but there was something shiny glimmering in the light for just a moment. There was no way to make out what, of course, but judging by the length of what she'd seen, it could be a tanto.


	9. kapitel neun

A/N: It's 11:09 here but the night isn't over yet...

yes I know it should be taught, not teached, but he's eight.

* * *

><p>Anko whirled around a tree, her coat flying out behind her. It was really kind of unnecessary, but c'mon: it looks really cool. Although sometimes because of the speed she was going she ran into a tree. Thankfully not this time though, that would have been highly embarrassing.<p>

_Wait. _This was where Sasuke was supposed to be, wasn't he? Why would he be gone? There was no dictionary in sight either so he might have gone to put that back but how could it be taking this long? Hm…and where was her clone? Clones did disperse on their own without being injured after a period of time, but hers tended to stay around for six hours or more.

Then a thought entered her mind. A horrible, terrible, thought: what if he had been kidnapped? Now if he had been another child, that would be an unfounded fear-Konoha was very safe, and although there were seedy parts, this was not one of them. But an Uchiha! Even though he didn't have the Sharingan yet…well, at least as far as she knew…he would someday almost certainly, and could be used to breed more Sharingan-bearers, very useful to another village. _Useful to this one, too_, whispered the conspiratorial part of her brain, but she ignored it, like usual, and continued her frantic thoughts.

She started walking around, looking behind trees and such. Then she looked behind herself. There, in a stately oak tree, was Uchiha Sasuke.

"_WHY_ are you in a tree?" she yelled, her hands on her hips. Honestly…

Sasuke blinked innocently, before saying, "I'll get down, sensei.." He came down carefully, holding the thick branches tightly before finally he was standing on one of the tree's large roots, leaning against its trunk.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Well what? I got down, didn't I?"

"Yes, but…" Telling him that he worried her half to death would be kind of awkward. Instead, she just sighed and said, "Never mind, now. What did you do to the clone?"

"I did nothing! She ran into a tree!" Sasuke said, indignantly. Anko groaned. Typical. With a few handsigns there was another one. Then she pulled out a handful of shuriken, and handed one to the boy.

"Now! Shuriken 101 shall finally commence!" she said joyfully.

"Wouldn't it be Shuriken 102, though, since you already teached me how to throw one properly?"

"_Yes_, brat, it would be. Fine, I suppose Shuriken 102 shall commence, does that make you feel better?", she said, grumbling under her breath but not really annoyed.

"Yep!" he replied, grinning. At least Anko thought it was a grin. "Wait…Anko-sensei…does your clone have to look like you? Um…"

In response to that, the clone put her hands together for a Henge. Instead of looking like Anko, the clone now appeared as a somewhat-shorter girl, with long plaited hair and dark jeans. Sasuke smiled a tiny bit.

"Okay!" said Anko, cheerily. "Watch and listen to me carefully, okay? This could really help you later." He nodded.

She walked around the clone, pointing at various parts of the body.

"Now, the neck is one of the most vulnerable parts of the body. You slit someone's throat and they're probably a goner." She said probably due to the existence of…_certain _ninja who had some kind of immortality. "And if their spinal cord is damaged then it's unlikely they'll ever walk again. Rather harder to accomplish with a shuriken, but you should keep it in mind nonetheless. For example, if…one happened to fall from a tree, one might break one's spinal cord." Sasuke glowered at that.

"But!" At this she turned to look straight at him. "However, depending on the circumstances, you don't want to kill someone right away. I said why before we were so _rudely _interrupted, do you remember what I said?"

"It's more fun to fight sometimes," he replied, in a calm, even voice, as if he were reciting a textbook.

She blinked a little at that. She said that? That…hadn't been the brightest idea, had it?. Fighting _could _be fun sometimes, but the last thing anyone needed was another whacked out Uchiha running around stabbing people.

"Um…well…yes, but there are other reasons, too." Like…uh…what were those other reasons? The tokubetsu jounin stared at the sky, hoping she would find an answer. Predictably, there were none. A few seconds later she managed to produce, "Like…if you have to take the person you're fighting to be interrogated. Or if you need to stall, so your comrades can sneak into a building or stuff like that." Anko was slightly shocked that she had said that, where had that information come from? It made sense, but…"And another reason you might not want to aim for the neck is if your opponent has protected their throat with, um, armour, or are moving really quickly." She was really working her brain lately, wasn't she?

"Moving really quickly?" he asked, a faint note of confusion evident in his voice. "Like…Shunshin?"

How did even know what that was? He had mentioned it before, maybe, but still…hn…

"No, someone Shunshining is too fast to be detected by a human eye. Even…even the Sharingan. I meant jumping-through-trees-all-over-the-place fast. You ever seen someone tree jump?"

"Yeah, once or twice," he said, shrugging.

"And while someone is doing that, it's fairly difficult to throw a small object at a small part of their body and have it hit. And another thing: even just slashing someone's face or extremities can give you an advantage. Even if it isn't as serious a wound, _per se_, as one to the abdomen…uh…chest and stomach, it still hurts." Absently she rubbed her forearm where she'd been hit by a kunai a few months earlier. "That…kind of ties into my next point, kinda…so there are parts of the body that a shuriken wound to won't usually result in not being able to function…like the legs, for instance…not that those wounds aren't serious!" Not getting a cut, gash, or laceration checked out was always a stupid idea. Infection can happen to the smallest or the biggest of wounds, after all.

"I'm not that stupid, you know, " he said, crossing his arms. "The owner of the grocery store near my house used to be a ninja and then he took a shuriken to the knee."

"Ahh, yes, ol' Renji-kun. I do believe he petitioned whoever's in charge of creating the ANBU uniforms to make their shin guards longer."

His eyes bugged out. "He was in ANBU?"

"Yes. And that is why it is important to get to the medic after being injured, or your wound will heal all wrong and you'll have to stand behind a counter and sell milk and trashy romance novels."


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: I realised the last chapter contradicted an earlier chapter. Now the guy who took a shuriken to the knee is a grocery-store owner.

To anonymous reviewer "random": well, Inabi is kind of dead, I'm afraid, but perhaps he'll show up in a flashback! …the other things he said have a meaning, too.

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><p>"So!" said Anko, cheerily. "I suppose we ought to get to the actual throwing, yes? Theory is all well and good but it's never as useful in the field as experience." She twirled a shuriken around in her hands. Rather dangerous, as all its edges were pointy, but she had always been sort of reckless.<p>

Sasuke looked faintly puzzled at that. "But…we're not in a field. We're in a clearing."

Anko wasn't quite sure how to respond, so she merely continued by saying, "Okay! So, first, I'll throw a shuriken, and then you'll copy me, all right?" He nodded, so she threw the first one. It hit the clone in the arm, with enough force to make said clone recoil but not enough to dispel. She handed Sasuke a shuriken. Cautiously, he threw it, slower than Anko's, but it hit nonetheless.

"Excellent!" crowed the purple-haired woman. "Now, the real use of clones with this is that they can _move, _and move like a real person would. Otherwise it's just a human-shaped target board, and the only use that has is desensitization."

"Wha…?"

The clone started walking around slowly, which was good, because it was distracting. Anko really, really did not want to explain what "desensitization" meant. Aside from the fact that it was a fairly difficult concept for an eight year old and he seemed pretty touchy about that sort of thing (she preferred not being hit with blunt objects, thank you), how could she say that the ideal ninja was one with no reactions to anything, not even mass slaug-wait. Itachi had been like that, hadn't he? Presumably still was. Did…that mean that the government and their ideas about perfect ninja were responsible for him….uh….turning out the way he had? On second thought, did she really want to know?

Poke. Poke. Poke.

"Hey!" she said, slightly aggravated.

"You spaced out," he replied. Was the clone rolling its eyes…? Yes. Hmph.

"…Oh…," she said, rubbing the back of her head, a little embarrassed. With another shuriken-the edges on this one were dull, she really ought to sharpen her weapons more often-she threw it at the clone, who winced slightly. Could clones feel pain? She'd never asked. Or maybe it was just pretending, to be more realistic. Or creepy, perhaps, considering it was _her _clone, after all.

Poke.

"Are you like this around everyone?" asked Sasuke, sighing a little.

"Yep!" she replied cheerfully, handing him a shuriken. "Now you try!"

With a tiny bit more confidence than the first time, he hurled it at the clone, almost missing, but not quite. With that, the clone disappeared.

"Why'd that happen?" he said, sounding faintly confused.

"There's only so much chakra in them," she said, shrugging. "Eventually if one gets hit enough, they go away. I'm…not quite sure _why._" Okay, now she wanted to know. Hn…maybe the library would have a book about it? Was she still banned from the library?

"So it isn't _really_ your clone, then," Sasuke said, with a kind of smirking tone. "I mean, if I you-ihh-walked into a tree too many times like that other clone, you wouldn't disappear, I don't think."

"I guess so."

"Can you make real, solid clones? Ones that can carry on, forever and ever and ever, as real people and not just energy-beings?"

Anko was kind of confused now. Did she ask this many questions when she was eight?

"I…don't know. Maybe?"

"Th-" Anko handed him another shuriken, and conjured another clone. "Think later. Throw now."

He grumbled a little, but did as told. This time Sasuke missed, due to the clone walking a bit faster than before.

A few hours later, after having gone through about two more clones, both Anko and Sasuke were lying on the grass, fairly exhausted.

"If that was productivity," said Anko, trying to find the strength to speak, "then I'm neverbeing productive again."

"Yeah," agreed Sasuke, his fringe damp with sweat from the combination of the training and the heat of the summer sun. "I wish we lived somewhere less _warm_…you ever seen snow, sensei?"

"Sure. It's…cold. Pretty, but cold."

He laughed. "Maybe you should wear an actual shirt, then, the next time you go to a place like that."

"Maybe I should." Then she blinked, a little puzzled. Did he just laugh?…did he? Yes, she finally decided. Wow. Progress?

She was really wondering about the clones now though. Could you make solid clones? Of people? …actually, that sounded like something sen-Orochimaru would do. Hn…

Eh. Thinking about such things hurt her brain. Perhaps when it was less warm and she was less tired she would return to that idea…

She looked over at Sasuke. Was he asleep? Yes. Anko wished she could fall asleep to, on the soft grass, but someone had to keep watch, in case other…persons wishing to do harm came around.

Then she giggled evilly, envisioning dumping a bucket of ice water on him. That would be funny.


	11. Chapter 11

I assumed there were some people thinking I had abandoned this in favour of Uchiha Fugaku being dull and boring in the past, so I wrote this. [He does manage to show up here though, despite being dead.]

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><p>Anko groaned. This was amazingly difficult. Far more so than she had originally expected. How had she forgot that everything is always harder than you anticipate? Even with her nimble hands…she twisted left and right, but to no avail.<p>

Ah! There! With a spare bit of cord she tied it off. Now for the other side, hopefully it wouldn't prove as tricky. It did seem to be slightly less jagged, but still was going to be irritatingly time consuming.

Then, done with that, she backed away and admired her handiwork. Sasuke was apparently quite a deep sleeper, a bad thing for a ninja. Perhaps pigtails would help him to change that. Unless he was the sort of little boy who _liked _his hair in bunches…

Seeing as she didn't feel like waking him-eight year olds may not be particularly dangerous, but they are quite loud-the kunoichi sat back down the grass, the morning dew all gone. She wished she had a book, but her pockets contained either useful scrolls or random stuff-receipts, broken fortune cookies, and such.

Absently she rubbed her head. Anko was used to it, but getting the memories of clones was always somewhat disconcerting. Maybe that was why she had been so unfocused earlier…

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><p>Sasuke, meanwhile, was having a rather lovely dream. His aunt Uruchi was giving him fresh baked biscuits and telling him stories about his father when he was young. Best of all, she hadn't told him to be more like nii-san! She was only six years older than Uchiha Fugaku, and they had grown up together, although a hereditary condition prevented her from being a ninja. Her husband was the one who hadn't been born an Uchiha; he was the child of foreigners and took her name when they married so he'd stop being thought an outsider.<p>

Uruchi had just finished telling him about the time that silly Fugaku confided in her that he wasn't _really_ twenty seven, he was forty, when the door opened, and in walked Fugaku himself, who didn't look his age now, either, but in terms of being older than he really was, not younger; stress had gotten to him very much. He wore a gentle smile, something which Sasuke had never seen before.

And then his hair became longer, and his flak jacket turned bone white, and his dark brown eyes became black and red and _he had a sword _and and

And then that bone white flak jacket became fishnet, and those horrible Sharingan eyes became pupilless, and he had the distinct feeling he wasn't in the bakery anymore.

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><p>The tokubetsu jonin shook the boy awake. He looked like he was screaming, although he made no noise. She was pretty sure she knew what he was dreaming about. Maybe she needed to find him a therapist…they were all civilians, and didn't like helping ninja get over killing someone for a variety of reasons, but Sasuke hadn't done the killing, so…<p>

He looked angry. This was probably not going to end well.

Suddenly a shiny shuriken was in his hand. And then it was flying at her. She'd been right. This was not going to end well.

Dodging easily, she held up her hands to show her lack of weapons.

"Sasuke, I don't want to hurt you," she said, making her voice as singsong and high pitched as possible; in other words, very much not like Itachi's. There was still rage in his eyes though…and fear.

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><p>No! He couldn't let him get away! Did he have another shuriken? Yes.<p>

Wait. The person in front of him was wearing a yellow miniskirt. Clearly that wasn't right. He had seen his brother wear a skirt once, but it was purple, and certainly not that short.

Who did he know who had…_Anko-sensei_. He froze. Had he just tried to kill the only person he had now? Abruptly he fell to the ground, partly in apology and partly in shock. It hurt and he suspected his legs would be bruised, but he knew deserved the pain.

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><p>Anko was glad he'd (seemingly) snapped out of it. She could come up with a number of other ways that could have ended, and several of them resulted in hospital trips.<p>

She knelt before his prostrate form. His head was on the ground; one leg bent under himself, the other stretched out awkwardly.

Not quite sure what to do, she whispered, "It's alright, Sasuke-kun."

* * *

><p><em>It's alright?<em>

That's all she had to say? Really? He knew that his shuriken would never in a million years have injured her, but, you know, it's the thought that counts.

"I'm sorry, An-Mitarashi-sensei," he said, and if he weren't already bowing deeply (absently he pulled his other leg beneath himself and his arms closer to his body) he would have done so. Hopefully she wouldn't stop teaching him because she thought he was crazy.

Was he?

* * *

><p>Hmm. At least he only said sorry once, as opposed to over and over while sobbing or something.<p>

"I understand," she said, smiling weakly, not that he would see. Really, Anko did. Sometimes she woke up because Genma or someone was shaking her awake because she was screaming, and although she didn't think she'd ever attacked anyone after one of those…episodes, she also tried not to remember them. She'd tell him her main forgetting technique, but pint sized alcoholics were generally not good. _Not that they are at any age _said a tiny voice in the back of her head who sounded suspiciously like Yuuhi Kurenai.

Hopefully he wouldn't think she was just saying meaningless words and that she didn't really understand. Maybe she'd tell him a little, a very little about her past, so that he could see that one could plot revenge and still have a life.

Right?


	12. Interlude

A/N: I'm not quite sure where the plot is going so you get this to explain some background. It's kind of rambly. Sorry 'bout that.

Also: today's my birthday. Now that I have entered the fourteenth year of life, does that mean I'm immune from cracks about my writing due to my age? Or do I have to wait until I'm seventeen, or twenty, or indefinitely? Should I stop asking you guys random questions?

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><p>Kakashi sighed as he sipped green tea in his apartment. The medic had said he would be fine as long he sustained no further head injuries within the next week and didn't exhaust himself.<p>

Now that he wasn't as dizzy, he felt slightly guilty. Sasuke didn't deserve to see him threatening his teacher like that.

It wasn't that he hated Anko. He wished he could like her, really. She was fun and daring and certainly quite attractive, but he couldn't. He couldn't like a traitor.

Fuinjutsu, the art of sealing, could be used for both good, bad, and neutral purposes. Seals were everywhere in a ninja village. Kakashi had a storage sealing scroll, for when he needed to bring a lot on a mission. Suna's Chiyo could, or so he had heard at any rate, use a seal to block a target's chakra. Fuinjutsu could also-as he was very well aware-trap a demon inside a person. All of these could be cast by people with very different motives.

But juinjutsu, the art of _cursed _sealing, was different. Very different. Superficially of course they were similar, but to one who understood them, they were not. Fuinjutsu could counter, somewhat, juinjutsu, but so could a blade plunged into oneself counter genjutsu. Kakashi was not a sealing master, not at all, not like-

In any case, he was…proficient in their usage, at least at the low level. If he put a storage seal on a rucksack, he could not affect that seal anymore than another capable of creating storage seals. Juinjutsu, on the other hand, could only be affected-not sort of countered, but removed or changed- by the creator. Which in the examples he'd had to study, was Sannin no Orochimaru. And his cursed seals could let him control, at least to a degree, those upon which he had placed it. He knew that; they had captured some random Kiri chuunin who bore that seal, and while they were interrogating him he began activating some kind of elaborate jutsu, before stopping abruptly with no apparent cause, and his curse mark appeared…not quite inflamed, but there weren't any other words he could think to describe it.

In short: he didn't trust Anko. Not at all. A small part of him realised it wasn't her fault, but the rest of him, including that mostly-buried bit of subconscious from when he was young who was a ninja that even Shimura Danzo would approve of, pushed it away. The seal also appeared to cause random fits of rage, a bad thing for a teacher, especially of an eight year old.

Some might muse on his motives, especially if they didn't know much about his background from before he was a jounin. It was not that he had been particularly fond of the Uchiha. Some of them were exceedingly arrogant, but it was mostly their general emotionlessness, their stiff postures and rigidity. It was a reminder of what he'd been. Also it was annoying.

Nor was it that he liked any of the boy's immediate family. Uchiha Mikoto had been insufferable and overly giggly. Uchiha Fugaku had been on a genin team with Hatake Sakumo, and Kakashi always got the feeling that the man despised him not because he had Obito's eye, but because he wasn't his father. Which was kind of strange, considering. And Uchiha Itachi was screwed up six ways to Sunday. A few shuriken short of a full set. There'd always been something…_off _about the boy. What he wasn't quite sure, but definitely something. He was frequently kind and then suddenly cruel, spacey one moment but overly attentive the next.

No, it was none of those things that his acquaintances might suggest. It was because he saw himself in the boy. Kakashi remembered quite well what it was like to walk into his father's study and see the man's body lying on the floor, dead, dark red blood staining his white clothes. That was something he'd never forget. And to see not just your father, but all your family dead? He'd heard from a former ANBU medic who now worked in the hospital's psychology department that Itachi'd made Sasuke _watch_, too, using some sort of genjutsu. Illusions left no physical scars but that didn't mean they left none at all.

He was undecided whether having no one to blame but a dead man who took his _own _life was better or worse than a very alive killer off in some far away land. The only hint of tracks they could find had ended about four kilometres from Konoha's gate.

Although being left alone until he was became a genin would not end well, being guided by Anko was even worse. If she hadn't had the cursed seal he'd have left them alone, but no matter what you thought about said cursed seal you couldn't deny she wasn't the sort of person who should be teaching a traumatised impressionable child. She drunk like Sannin no Tsunade, swore like a sailor and dressed like a woman who bore her bedding at dawn. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. The basic facts of her character were nonetheless undeniable. Mitarashi Anko did have an extreme fondness for drink. She'd carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding. Her flightiness was well known.

In other words, she was the exact opposite of the stolid pillar Minato-sensei had been for him. Then again, Minato-sensei had been perfect. Brilliant and kind and the best teacher anyone could ever hope for. He'd never seen the man with alcohol; he'd never even seen him with coffee. A child of civilians who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

The jounin tried to imagine what a boy taught by Mitarashi Anko would grow up to be like. Silly and cackling and with a shirt barely buttoned, no doubt.

On the other hand-the part of his brain that believed in Anko's trustworthiness was pushing back now-what if Sasuke _was_ left alone? Hatred, after all, is both addictive and destructive. That boy would be far more acceptable in the eyes of his Academy teachers and the Hokage, but on the inside he'd be worse, somehow, and probably run off to the first fool to offer him power. The Sharingan in some evil's hands…not good.

Suddenly the bright red numbers on his clock drew his attention. It was that late already? Oh dear…Homura was going to kill him.


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: Yes, that was a Billy Joel reference.

Also today is my birthday again, so I figured I would write another chapter.

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><p>Sasuke wasn't sure how long he had been kneeling. It <em>felt<em> like a long time. The grass, which had been in cheerier hours warm and soft, had turned rough and sticky. His head hurt. His _everything_ hurt. And he was still sleepy. But he couldn't fall asleep, he simply couldn't, because he knew what would happen.

_What if that never stopped happening_

_ coffee and sleeping pills?_

_ It's what you deserve for being so weak, foolish little brother_

_ no_

_ no_

_ no_

and suddenly all he could see was red and black and swirls and

_open your eyes, moron_

So Sasuke did. It was bright. Bright like his life was never going to be again.

And then-

"Get up br-Sasuke-kun. This, um, really isn't necessary, okay?"

But it was. He tried to kill her, didn't he? Maybe she wanted to do something to him. Sasuke tried to push himself off the ground. He managed to sit back on his legs, but standing was an exercise in futility. Well, he was sort of up.

He looked up. There was Mitarashi Anko, looking...like herself? It would be kind of bad if she didn't, no?

"Sasuke-kun."

"Yes- _what was the proper form of address here? _Mitarashi-sensei?"

"Okay, I—how do I put this? You don't need to bow for a half-hour because you threw a shuriken at me because you thought I was...some evil figment of your imagination. You're _eight_, okay? And I've been dodging alllllll sorts of sharp pointy things since before you were born. And-uh-well I mean obviously that wasn't, um, _good_, but your reaction was kind of...excessive, I think. And if you, uh, keep doing that, when you actually _do _do something far worse, your apology won't mean quite as much." She rubbed the back of head with her hand. Her purple pineapple hair swished slightly.

"Sorry?" he offered weakly.

She sighed. "Okay. Maybe we should...do something else now." And she held out a hand. _Why? _Oh. Because he couldn't get up by himself, like a baby, because he was weak and and and

"I guess we could, like, go get food or something," said Anko, shrugging. "I like food. Mmm. Food. You know, I didn't even eat breakfast. Did I? Anyway it's probably lunch time. Maybe I should get a watch, except then I would probably break it. Hmmm."

Normally Sasuke hated this kind of chatter, but right now it was distracting, and in a good way. Perhaps he should learn to be like her. Ignore his problems with irreverency. Was that a word? _Mindless idiocy_. That would work.

Ita—_that man's _friend liked saying that. Uchiha Shisui was highly dismissive of nearly everything. _Oh—don't mind those girls, Itachi dear, look at them with their bobbins and bits and odds, engaging in mindless idiocy the way they've been told to do by their mothers, just the same. _The few times Sasuke had encountered him he was mildly baffling, but the casual way he talked to Itachi, like he was ordinary—less than ordinary, even—was somewhat pleasing. Except now Shisui was dead. Dead in the water. What kind of parent would name their son death water, anyway? His parents, obviously. Also dead. Deadeadeadeadeadeadeadead wait where was he what was going _on_ and

Somehow he was out of the clearing. Anko appeared to still be talking about nothing. What. What. What. This was not good. He couldn't just space out randomly whenever. What if it got worse, and he started thinking every old house was his house, every woman in an apron his mother, and blood of any kind the blood of his family? Then he couldn't be a ninja—or even function in society. No. nononononononononononononono. He had to be a ninja. Or else, the souls of his slayed relations would come upon him in the night and...do whatever ghosts do to little boys while they're sleeping. Nothing good. And they would yell at him for being weak, too, wouldn't they, and not carrying on the family tradition of being a ninja that went back a zillion trillion years and—then probably they would yell at him for not liking tea ceremonies or the colour red or all those other stupid traditional things Uchiha were supposed to like for some reason, except tea ceremonies were for girls and red was such an angry colour and he really wasn't very good at getting angry, and shouldn't Anko be making him come back to reality by means of some vaguely witty statement right about now or something?

He looked over at her. She was still going on about something, about how she could never find the good kind of shortbread cooky at the store anymore and it was so annoying and she really ought to send a Strongly Worded Letter to the company and blahblahblah_blah _

Where even were they? Sasuke looked around. On a dirt path that was reasonably well lit, it seemed. On either side were fields of some sort. There was no sign that he could see that they were still in Konoha. But they had to be, didn't they? He would have noticed a wall and border guards, who would probably be pretty edgy, considering that they let A COMPLETELY IRREDEMABLY EVIL PERSON LEAVE THE CONFINES OF THE VILLAGE _except you wouldn't have noticed, sasu-chan, you're about as observant as a two-layered gingerbread cake _and –-well, even though that statement was totally, totally false, his mind conjuring up false statements of Shisui was less irritating than when it did that with...other people.

But it was a possibility that he had missed the wall, because all he could see was fields., going not quite to the horizon (there was something out there) but almost, almost but not quite reaching there.

"Hey, uh—Anko-Sensei?"

Half lidded eyes turned to look at him. "Yeeahhh?"

"I—I think we're lost."


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: This is an incredibly dumb chapter. But it's a chapter, right?

Also, while _I_ am aware that Itachi is 13, and _you_ are aware that he is 13, that doesn't mean everyone in Konoha does.

(And: a big shout out to mabidiso for always giving great reviews, and for still reading this after that year-long hiatus.)

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><p>Mitarashi Anko prided herself on not letting herself gape like a fish. Ninja are supposed to be emotionless, after all, and anyway it hurt her jaw.<p>

But in this moment she was unable to stop herself. They were, indeed, lost. And not in the "surrounded by quirky little shops in a half-forgotten corner of the village" lost. _In the middle of a wheat field _lost. She didn't even know they _grew_ wheat in Fire Country.

"But you know where we are, right? Riiiiiight?" asked Sasuke.

"'Course, Sasuke-kun," she replied smoothly, smiling down at him. "This way." As a highly trained ninja, she was good at lying, even when on the inside she was halfway to a panic attack.

They walked for a bit, tramping down amber coloured stalks. It was only a few months until harvest season, wasn't it? It was...what month was it, anyway? Why wasn't Sasuke in school? (The concept of "summer vacation" was not one afforded to ninja-in-training. There are no holiday breaks in war.) (Except that one time in the First Shinobi World War but that was like a million years ago and barely counted.)

"Hey, shouldn't you be at the Academy right now 'stead of following me around?" she asked, in the most serious tone she could muster.

"It's cancelled until September. I got a letter. It said...uh...because of...administrative reshuffling, or something like that. I don't know."

Hunh. Administrative reshuffling? What could that possibly mean? Assuming that is what it really said; such a letter was undoubtedly written for parents and not students. Hmm...wait!Now that she thought about it, she had heard that term used before. After the Kyuubi attack. Some chuunin running off of espresso and adrenaline had explained it to her, whispered at some funeral for some poor dead man she could no longer quite remember the name of.

"It means—it means "a lot of the little people are dead, and the government is about to collapse from the weight of undone paperwork,"" he had sad, hadn't he? Yes, yes he had. Then, it made a lot of sense. She was constantly being called in to do various random jobs; bring food to the hospital staff, reshingle the orphanage's roof, file police reports,

THAT WAS IT!

The Konoha Military Police had been from its founding until a few weeks ago, an organisation dominated by Uchiha. Anyone could apply in theory; but in reality very few who weren't of the Sharingan clan ever did. She shuddered to think of the criminals that were no doubt not being caught right now as those few left scrambled to train new recruits. One might think ANBU would be an easy replacement, and she did vaguely remember hearing some grumbles about that sort of thing, but it was only a short-term solution. Their purview was killing and espionage, not petty thievery, domestic abuse, and illegal gambling rings.

So, presumably, many of the Academy teachers were being reassigned to the police force, as they were all chuunin who had proven they could work well with civilians. Late August was when this year's Chuunin exams were going to be; and then all those who passed would be made, er, _highly encouraged _to become officers or teachers. Not really the best of solutions, but after the war the Yondaime promised he wouldn't pull anymore people out of retirement unless the village was facing imminent attack, and it seemed to Sandaime was honouring that.

"Hey, look, the wall!" said Sasuke cheerily. "People! We're not lost anymore!"

And there, indeed, was a high stone wall. A bored-looking ninja was leaning against it; another was sitting on top of it, and a third was talking to a man in coveralls and a cone-shaped straw hat. They approached; Sasuke, with the boundless energy of a little boy, and Anko, with the learned caution of one in a place of unfamiliarity.

"Uh...hey, um, Shinobi-san," she said, to the one who was on the ground and not otherwise occupied. Best to be polite. "Where are we?"

He rolled his eyes. "Konoha."

"But this is the countryside!" said Sasuke, confused. "Since when did Konoha have farms?"

"Since its founding, little boy," replied the man in the coveralls, a bit angrily. "Where do you suppose you get your food from?" He sighed, like he was used to this sort of questioning.

"But Konoha's a city. You don't have farms in the city."

"Konoha's a _village_, kid. You think this is a city? You ain't seen nothing yet. There're places out there with half a million people and buildings twenty storeys tall. Anyway, how long do you think we'd last in a war if all our food supply was outside the walls? Not very long, let me tell you. That's the _real_ reason Uzushio fell, you know," and then the man devolved into incomprehensible, bitter mutterings.

"Just follow the wall and you'll be back at the main gates in half an hour," said the ninja on top of the wall.

"Aww, Nagisa, you aren't supposed to tell people that!," complained the bored-looking one, but Anko had already grabbed Sasuke's hand and starting walking. She didn't want to be here any longer then she had to.

Once they were were out of earshot, Nagisa turned to stare down at his comrades and asked "I thought the last Uchiha was a boy?"

"Me too," replied the farmer.

"Hey, his brother's hair is longer than mine," said the woman who had been talking to the farmer, flicking her shoulder-length orange hair out of her face.

There was a horrified gasp from the ninja who had been leaning against the wall, who stood up straight abruptly. "Uchiha Itachi is _male_? But—but-" He buried his hands in his face.

"And also twelve!" said Nagisa, rather too gleefully.

Another horrified gasp. "I think I need a drink. You guys wanna go to the bar after our shift is done? I'll pay."

"No thanks," said the ginger on his right. "I'm not old enough to drink."


	15. Hotaru no Otosan

A/N: Holla, folks! Bet you thought it was going to take another year for me to update this, right? You totally did. And I apologise for having ridiculously long parenthetical clauses in the middle of sentences. I blame taking Latin. Also apologies for this being like 56% thinking, as usual.

Also I just realized that Sasuke already knew Konoha had farms (see Chapter 4). Uh...he has a really bad memory?

* * *

><p>They had been walking for a long time. Sasuke wasn't sure how long. Diu, diu, diu...to their left was the wall. To their right was trees. They were walking on a narrow dirt path, one that only existed because the flora that would have grown there had been prevented by growing by a steady beat of feet. It was oddly serene. The birds were not chirping; the sky was cloudless; there was no wind. Sasuke wanted to think, to be—what was that phrase Haha-ue had used to describe Chichi-ue when he went out to the lake after supper and just sat there for an hour—oh! <em>Deep in contemplation<em>. But he would not allow himself that, or else he'd probably wind up...in the middle of a rice paddy or something. (Which, quite frankly, would make even less sense than wheat, as Konoha was just north enough to make rice growing somewhat difficult.)

He could not see Anko-sensei's face. She was in front of him; he had let go of her hand, but still remained behind. This was kind of her fault, wasn't it? She was the _adult_. Once at school there had been some big thing (A "scandalous case of neglect," some random tall person who judging by their clothes was related to him had said) where some teacher was just leaving the five year old class (yo-o-chi-e-n, he always said the mora carefully, precisely, because ni-_Itachi_ did) unattended for long periods of time to go do something that was only said in hush-hush tones, whispered over rice cakes, behind the shoji screens, which meant that it was surely awful. And...

hadn't he been thinking about Anko-sensei? He had been, right? Why? Oh! Right! This teacher had been taken away because as the adult in charge he was _supposed to paying attention_ to make sure they didn't do anything dumb (Or at least dumb and dangerous to their continued existence.) Like Anko-sensei hadn't been paying attention, so clearly this was her fault. Except he would rather mind her getting taken away.

Aww, man. He was _thinking_. This is exactly what he had been trying to avoid.

"Turn right here," she said, breaking the silence.

"Why?"

"I know where we are. C'mon, it's a shortcut. It's a lot quicker. Trust me."

Clearly she was trying to make up for her earlier lack of directional based capability. Well...it's not like he had anywhere to be anytime soon. So he turned right.

They were still on a dirt path, but this seemed like a planned one. It was much wide, and up ahead he could see nailed to a tree a brightly coloured piece of wood that was probably a trail marker. Now they were surrounded on both sides by the forest; it was darker and cooler and he could hear distantly something that was probably a frog. Frogs, he had read in some glossy parenting magazine once, were something that young boys were supposed to be interested in, but he had never understood why you would want to have a frog when snakes were _so_ much awesomer.

Two roads diverged in the wood. Anko turned down the one more travelled by. Sasuke couldn't imagine being in a place like this alone, without a map or...anything. Did ninja carry maps around with them? He really hoped so.

The trees were thinning out, and the road abruptly changed to cobblestones, like they used to use in the more...villagy part of the village before asphalt became wide spread. Soon they were passing through what seemed to be a...meadow? No, that couldn't be it. The land was too...well-kept. There were no tall, swaying wildflowers or stringy saplings. It was kind of like a...like a...training ground!

Actually, come to think of, he did see two people standing near a tree. One of them was tall and grey-haired, the other short, with...very pale skin and dark hair. Oh. Oh.

"Yo, Mitarashi-san!" said the older boy.

"Hi?" she responded, sounding faintly confused.

He bounded over, dragging the smaller boy behind me.

She sighed. "Oh. Hello, Shin-san."

"I did not expect to see you here wow I did not realize you frequented this way you never struck me as the sort of person to have wanderlust or to get lost because you see very few people come down here intentionally how have you been have you been asked to become a teacher because I know some tokubetsu jounin who have and wow I can't imagine you as a teacher it just seems so unlike you but who am I to judge I mean you know _you know_," he said, very fast and very, very monontonously.

"Uh, yeah, I know, yeah," she said, looking rather dazed. It was understanable. She turned to him. "Sasuke, this is Shin. Shin, this is Uchiha Sasuke."

"Nice to meet you!" said the teen, bowing. "And this is my little brother." The little brother's response was to scuttle behind Shin's trousers.

"...Good afternoon," replied Sasuke, sketching a bow. He was so glad that handshakes did not tend to be involved in introductions here.

"I didn't know you had a little brother," commented Anko, twirling a lock of purple hair around her fingers.

"I'm a top secret government experiment!" said a quiet little voice.

Their parents must be _so weird_, Sasuke thought. (Was it normal to have gone completely grey before you were twenty? Could that be someone's natural hair colour?) Unless they both really were...top secret government experiments. Did the government _do _that? (Once he had seen a man make trees grow with just his hands, like the Shodai except obviously not. Haha-ue had said his eyes had fooled him, but...)

_But at least Shin is taking time to teach his otouto_, whispered a tiny, tinny voice somewhere in the corner of his mind.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: If anyone didn't realize, Shin's brother is Sai, who is, as far as we know, not a top-secret government experiment, although I mean...he could be, considering the heights of illogicalness the manga reaches sometimes, right?

* * *

><p>Shin was one of those guys that was completely inscrutable.<p>

Anko knew that he was a member of ROOT. (Once he had opened his mouth very, very wide, for a reason she could no longer quite remember, and she could see the black ink forever burned into his tongue.)

But she had met other members of ROOT, and they were not like Shin. They were stolid, stoic, rolling with the energies of a thousand years of careful precise ninja tradition. Shin was _emotionless _in the sense that she had never seen him smile, but he was not _stolid _in the sense that he was calm. He was not calm. He was loud, impatient, quick to jump and slow to reason.

She wasn't entirely sure why they were friends (if you could be friends with such a person), or even how they had originally met; but met they had, and now they were forever linked in a chain of madness and overly salty umeboshi. They'd see each other about once every two months, and he'd cock his head just so (and always on the same side, like it wasn't a natural reaction but one he'd learned from watching someone once) and wave, wave like the daimyos on parade, all swivel-wristedly, unless he was with one of his comrades-in-arms, in which case he would just bore his pure black eyes right into her soul.

The small child behind him looked sort of related to him, if she squinted—they had the same color eyes and the same nose, kind of. Probably he was just some other little orphan boy lost in a maze of rigidity that Shin had decided to "adopt". It did seem like something he would do.

"It's nice of you to teach your little brother," said Sasuke, in a strained voice.

Shin shrugged. "Well you know somebody has to and considering that a real instructor can only spend so much time with individual students and all I thought I might as well give him some extra help like you know right I mean _you know_." (Shin had some sort of love affair going on with filler words, Anko was sure of it.)

"No, not really," Sasuke replied, stiffly. Oh dear. Anko wasn't entirely sure where this conversation was going, but nowhere good. Especially considering Shin's propensity to say things that were not really appropriate for the situation.

"That's too bad," said Shin, cocking his head to the side (Anko always thought that his neck must be so sore.) "It's such a shame that Konoha has so low a birth rate so many people are only children luckily we have a lot of immigrants but that's no way to sustain a village."

"I have a brother. He's just _evil_."

Shin sighed. "I _know_ I just assumed you didn't want that to be brought up." Wow! Some sort of actual tact! A+ to you, Shin! Heyy, maybe he was Kakashi's illegitimate son, considering how much of a person's temperament in this town seemed to be genetic. Except Shin was probably like 15 or something and Kakashi was about 22 and ...no. Bad.

"You know Itachi?" Sasuke asked, raising his eyebrows. "How?"

"I have known him in every sense of the word," Shin answered. He paused to breathe, which was kind of amazing. "On the surface he was always so ordinary but then when he started to talk he was just so queer with all of his _ideas _and visions of other futures like he was a science fiction writer or something I guess like that _you know _except not not at all more disturbed like he'd spent too much time reading terrible political theory books and somehow I always knew he was going to depart from Konoha but not like in the manner that he did."

Sasuke looked rather dazed, not unsurprisingly. "Ordinary. _Ordinary_. Is it ordinary to you to be a twelve year old in ANBU? Is it ordinary to never laugh, never smile?"

Shin attempted to grin. "You'd be surprised, Uchiha-kun how many people I know who fit those descriptions." That was a rather sad statement, but Anko knew it to be true. ROOT (which, technically, did not exist) was a remnant of a foregone era where every child since they could walk was a killer.

"And...the reason you know Itachi is because you're in ANBU too and you went on missions together?"

"Yeah," Shin replied absently. "He doesn't really _play well with others_ though if you know what I mean you know _you know_."

"I do." Then Sasuke turned to Anko. Err... "Did you know Itachi too?" he asks, narrowing his eyes.

Uh. Uhh. What is she supposed to say to this question. _Yeah, once Kakashi got him really drunk and I had to drag him to Uchiha Shisui's house at three in the morning. _Or maybe _Once we totally made eyes at each from across a conference room _or even _I called him a genius gnome once and he hit me with handle end of a kunai. _

"Not really," she says, finally. Perhaps when Sasuke is older (and she has a nice big bottle of the ol' water of life in front of her) she'll tell him those things, tell him all the things she absurd things she ever saw or heard or felt an Uchiha do, but not now. He would _not_ be amused. "I'm not in ANBU and he's six years younger than me so, I mean, you know, _you know_." Oh, so she talked like Shin now? At least she paused occasionally.

"Oh," said Sasuke. There was a certain emotion in his voice that she could not quite place. Relief? Sadness? But there was definitely something.

Shin and Little Top Secret Experiment were probably only allotted so much time to train, so they should probably best get going.

"Well, I would like to be getting back to the village before the sun starts to go down," she said, and wow that was stilted sounding.

Shin waved, and Little Top Secret Experiment waved too (he had sat down, and somehow acquired paper and crayons. Wow, did that mean ROOT had an art supply budget?)

Sasuke followed half a meter behind her. She wondered why. The road was really wide. Anko turned around to see what he was doing; and what he was doing was looking back at the two children (everyone younger than her was a child in Anko's mind); Shin was sitting on the grass now also, making short soft strokes on his brother's paper with a multitude of brightly colored crayons.

"Itachi never drew anything with me," he said, and now she can without a doubt place which emotions he is feeling: bitterness and jealousy.

Anko thinks that this is probably the first and last time anyone will be envious of someone in ROOT.


	17. La Librairie

A/N: This chapter takes place two weeks after the last chapter. There are going to be a lot of mini timeskips like that, because I don't think you really want to read a day by day account of everything Anko and Sasuke do together for weeks on end, and even if you _do_ actually want to read that, _I don't want to write __that._

* * *

><p>"So, do you have all your schoolbooks yet?" Anko-sensei asked. "I heard school starts on the first."<p>

Sasuke blinked, confused. So...it was late August? Really? Whoa. How did that happen? Where did the summer go? Well, spending a month in a coma did take up a lot of it, but...still.

"Uh...no," he said. "I didn't realize it was so close to September."

"Yeah, it's August 28th," she responded. "C'mon, one of my friends owns a book store, I'll buy them for you." Sasuke was glad she had offered to pay, because he had no idea where his parents' money was; luckily there was enough food left in the cupboards and the refrigerator he could have something to eat each day, but he was almost down to only the food meant in case of emergency, like if a flood trapped you inside your house. There was no water when he turned on the faucet, probably because he hadn't paid to continue it running, but the ancient well down by the lake seemed to work just fine, and he had managed to use the wood burning stove in that abandoned cabin to boil it.

His mother had always bought his books; he didn't think he'd ever been in an actual bookstore. It seemed kind of odd that Anko-sensei would have a friend who ran one. Maybe she wasn't a ninja? Hunh. All of his parents' friends, and all of...Itachi's friends (if you could call them that) were ninja.

The bookstore was in the new shopping district, the one built after the war. It had a brightly colored sign, with _New & Used Books For All Ages _written on it. In the window there was a cheerful display of books, all of which looked new. It did not seem like it was going to be one of those creepy stores run by wizened old men he'd read about.

Inside, it was well lit, with neatly labelled shelves that did _not_ seem to go on forever.

"Oh, looks like Tanneke has a baby!" said Anko, grinning. Sasuke looked around. He did not see any babies. But he did see a small, blond boy, about his height.

"I'm not a baby!" the other boy insisted. "I'm _eight_." Oh. He did look vaguely sort of familiar.

"I'm eight too, Anko-sensei, do you think I'm a baby too," he said, mock insulted.

"Oh, uh, of course not," she said, smiling tightly. "Heh heh."

"You're Sasuke, right?" said the other boy. "I'm Frans."

"Yeah," he responded. "...How do you write that?"

Frans sighed, like he got asked that a lot, and probably he did. "It's like Fu-ra-n-su, except it's not said like that. I don't know why. It's just not."

"Are you excited for school to start again?" Sasuke asked. It seemed like the polite thing to say, right?

"Yeah, I guess. I mean...it's kind of boring, but so is being in here all day. Oh! You've come for books, haven't you? They're over there." He gestured off to a shelf on the far right wall.

The three of them walked over to that bookcase. There were a lot of textbook looking books; you could tell that the ones on top were for adults, because they had titles like _Economics of the Environment-11__th__ Edition_ and _Calculus: Late Transcendentals- 2__nd__ Edition_ and other long things. Why adults would need textbooks, though, he wasn't sure, but that was clearly who they were meant for.

"Here," said Frans, giving him three books. _Konoha Past and Present_, _The Fundamentals of Fighting_, and _Stealth and Surveillance For Beginners_.

"Thanks," he replied absently. "Why do we need a history book? Shouldn't we have already learned that?"

"I don't know," said the blond boy. "I'm having that too, but I also have _M__athematics: Grade Three _and _The Hi no Kuni Weekly Reader _and _Earth Science_."

"Why do you still have the books from last year?" asked Sasuke, confused.

"'Cause you're gonna be a ninja and he's not," said Anko, who was flipping through what looked like an art book. "They get to learn long division, you get to learn long-ranged weapons."

"Oh," he said. "How'd you know I needed the...ninja academy texts, then?"

"Your name is Sasuke. You couldn't _not_ be a ninja. Besides, we won't have a new school year until March."

And then a tall brunette woman appeared, carrying a stack of books. Her hair was a mousy brown, her eyes were grey, and her skin was light, none of which was strange, but there was something about her facial features that was distinctly...odd.

"Heyy, Tanneke," said Anko, smiling. "How's it going?"

"Well if it isn't Mitarashi Anko pretending to be literate again! I'm just fine, thank you. Oh, and who is this?" she said, smiling down at him. Her accent was also strange, but it sounded sort of like a Konoha one.

"I'm Sasuke," he responded. She would know his family name soon enough, when he turned around, but right now he didn't want her to expect anything of him because of who he was.

"I'm gonna train him up to be the best like no one ever was," Anko-sensei said, throwing her arm around his shoulder.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure you will," said Tanneke, in that voice that adults used when they meant that you were being really dumb, but they were trying to be polite. "Just don't get yourself injured, now, I know how you get."

Anko huffed indignantly, but she began to walk to the back of the store with her friend, so she could pay for the books. Her wallet was made of zebra-print duct tape.

"Thank you," Sasuke mumbled.

"No problem. I guess we should get going. Don't want to distract Tanne-chan here from her work too much." (On the counter laid an open book of crossword puzzles.)

"Have a nice day," said Tanneke cheerfully. "I hope I'll be seeing you again soon!" She waved.

And as they were walking out, Frans whispered, "Have fun learning to be a murderer."


	18. Idiocy Writ Large

A/N: Tanneke looks strange to Sasuke 'cause she's white. So...I guess they come from whatever the Naruto-verse's equivalent of Europe is? Well, Frans is from Konoha. I guess I could have made her from Konoha too and you all probably wouldn't have noticed that she and her son have Dutch names, but in the interests of accuracy... (I have wanted to call a character Tanneke ever since I read _Girl With a Pearl Earring_ in August)

It was the first day of school. Sasuke had brushed his hair, put on his cleanest clothes, and carefully counted out four pencils, three pens, and one eraser for his schoolbag. He was exceedingly excited. Whee. Learning to be a ninja. _Awesome_.

_Your brother was a genin when he was _seven, he heard the winds whisper when he walked by what had been his father's study. He had taken all of Itachi's stuff and thrown it into what was his bedroom (Sasuke dared not actually _enter_ into said room, for fear of genjutsu, but he figured hurling random clothes and things into it was okay), but nonetheless, his familicidal older brother seemed to haunt the house. Sometimes in the middle of the night Sasuke heard the screen to Itachi's room being opened, like he was coming home from a mission late.

Whatever. Itachi was stupid and lame and GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY and he did not have time for this. Hm. Did he have everything? He looked through his stuff. Textbooks? Check. Writing tools? Check. Pratice kunai and shuriken? Check. ...Real kunai and shuriken? Check, although he should put those somewhere less easily seen because he wasn't supposed to have them. Lunch? Check. (He had found a handful of crinkled ryo notes in the pockets of Itachi's trousers that were in the laundry hamper in the bathroom. It felt weird to be using his money, but he was sick of crackers and canned food.)

Sasuke walked out the door. The air was still; there were no birds singing...and no distant shouting or footsteps or broom sweeping. It was unnerving. But he continued on.

The schoolyard was a flurry of activity. The regular students were just coming back from summer break and the ninja students were just coming back from...whatever reason they had not been in school. Children from ages three to eighteen and their assorted relations filled the space, chattering about any matter of subjects in any matter of tones.

He remembered when they had come back from break last year. It was not much different than now, except for one thing: Sasuke could see no one with black hair other than himself. Dark brown, yes, but no soot or inky-blue blacks. (Was this how the rest of his life was going to be? Constantly seeing the places where his relatives had once stood and _should_ be standing but were not?)

A woman's voice, high and clear, called out. "All regular students should report to their assigned rooms. All Ninja Academy students, please form a line to my right."

And then, chaos. A scurrying menagerie of all sorts of folks, scattering like seeds in a dark gale, if seeds had brains and thus could be blamed for their inability to behave in an orderly fashion. Lanky young men with hair dyed a stupid shade of orange and waifish young women with stupid socks all clad in dark uniforms (and Sasuke was so glad he didn't have to wear a uniform) trudged off to the secondary school building, steps heavy. Housewives carried blubbering babies off to the nursery classrooms. But then there were the middle grades, _his_ peers, old enough to walk but not quite old enough to know where they were going. He saw people he knew. There was Uki, his stupid sister Shuzuko still tagging behind him, probably still carrying on about caterpillars, and Yēun, wearing that same stupid yellow cardigan, and Aliza who looked even more afraid of her own shadow than usual and that Nakamura Something-or-other who was missing an eye and hated everyone and...there was Frans, his blond hair neatly combed. Sasuke really hoped he didn't turn his way.

There was a brief moment where he thought maybe he was going to, but the boy just continued on, talking about football with some other stupid boy. Not that he carried about Frans' opinion or anything. But you know.

And then nobody was left but other children who were going to be ninja. Many of whom were clearly morons who did not understand that when the woman said "my right", she meant "your left". He hated everybody. Everybody was stupid.

"New pupils, remain here. Everyone else, you should have received your room locations in the mail. If you didn't or your don't remember it, please go to room 105," said the same woman. If the older children already knew where they were supposed to go, why weren't they dismissed with the others? Was that really necessary? Who came up with this system?

Sasuke looked around at those who remained. Hn. There was Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy, Weirdo Dog Boy, Weirdo Bug Boy, Shikamaru, Shikamaru's fat friend, Shikamaru's weirdo possibly albino friend, Shikamaru's weirdo possibly albino friend's friend with the pink hair, Weirdo Asymmetrical Purple Hair Girl, Weirdo Overly Spiky Hair Boy (or...girl, maybe?) Weirdo Snowboarder Boy, Weirdo Afro Girl, That Freaky Hyuuga Chick, and like...several other random people. (Yes, he did know other people's names, just not _these_ people, because they were all stupid except Shikamaru, who just _pretended_ to be stupid for reasons he did not fully understand.)

The woman clapped her hands. She was not wearing a hitai-ate, which was good, because it meant she wouldn't be their teacher. Her voice was stupid.

"Well, children, follow me! We're going to the auditorium first for a brief assembly." She smiled in what seemed like an attempt to be warm.

She turned and walked into the building, a mass of squirmy eight year olds behind her. They were really loud. Why couldn't anyone else walk in a straight line? He hated all of them already.

The auditorium was a study in stupidity, as was everything about this stupid, stupid school. The curtains had probably originally been a strong dark green, but dust and sunlight had reduced them to a faded reminded of past glories. For some stupid reason, nobody was allowed to sit on the end seat on the far sides of both columns. But there were only 28 people so they only needed two rows anyway.

And then, on stage. A man. The Hokage. _Whoa._


	19. Chapter 19

The Hokage was wearing his ridiculous robes and ridiculous hat. What was with powerful leaders and ridiculous hats? Perhaps there was some sort of correlation between power and stupid hat wearing. ...Did Itachi have one? That would actually be kind of funny. "You're an S-Class Missing-nin now, son! Here's your stupid hat. You must wear this at all times." He almost giggled, before he realized that 1. that would not be appropriate, and 2. he shouldn't be thinking of that man in terms of anything that could be humorous.

Konoha's esteemed leader began to speak. "Greetings, young men and women! I am glad to see so many of you have decided to embark on this-" and at this Sasuke realized it was going to be a dull and boring speech and probably basically the same as his father had heard over thirty years earlier. The word "embark" was a noted hallmark of boring speeches to him. (He was aware he should pay attention to the Hokage, but he could not imagine that any actually useful information would be contained within said speech.)

And then everyone started clapping, so he figured he should too. The Hokage walked off the stage and a thin brunette woman took his place.

"My name is Gao Jingmei," she said. It was an odd sort of name, but her accent bore no traces of being anything other than Konohan. Hnn. "I am the teacher of the First Class here at the Konoha Ninja Academy. I will be instructing you this year...and possibly next year, too, depending on your... _capabilities_." She said that last clause in a hushed sideways kind of tone, the one people use when they're trying to sound nefarious, and Sasuke was reasonably sure she only included that last part to make herself sound stronger. He did not care for those people.

"Children, please rise—quietly—and follow me," the lady continued. She turned and started to walk towards the side door of the auditorium. Naturally, nobody rose quietly. There was a low hiss of chatter and a dim thump-thump of feet that had not yet been trained to be softer.

Itachi had always been so _quiet_. Sasuke always imagined he had used genjutsu to ensure he made no sound as he walked about, but—no. He needed to stop thinking so much about Itachi. No. He would not do this.

"Hey, dummy, move," said some kid behind him. He felt embarrassed and scampered ahead to where the rest of the line was. He needed to stop thinking so much _period_. Or at least develop the ability to think and walk at the same time.

The classroom was all right, albeit not much different from any of the other classrooms he'd had. It had the same long tables set on a sort of staircase thing the rest of the building had. The teacher's desk was at the front. The windows were of that odd sort of material where you could see light and maybe the faintest glimmer of a tree from outside, which had always annoyed him but it was not unfamiliar. There was a bookcase off in the corner. And _no rug_. That, he felt, was a sign that They Were Going To Be More Mature Now And Not Small Crying Children With Separation Anxiety. (He was not entirely sure what "separation anxiety" was, actually, but Shisui had used it, that one time when he was alone in a room with him and complaining about all the problems of his schoolmates or something. Sasuke had generally been too scared to ask him what he meant when he said things like "parsimonious" or "economic atherosclerosis".)

The other children were, however, had seemed to not have gotten the maturity memo. They were still carrying on, until-

"_Silence_," said Gao Jingmei. Her voice was slippery and snakelike (surely there was a word for that, but what was it?) and _loud_. Amazingly, the room became silent. She wrote the characters of her name on the board. Hunh. She must be using a rare reading or _something_, because that's not how those would normally be pronounced, would they? Hn.

"You are here to learn to become ninja," she said. "It is not a career for the faint of heart. If you think you will not be able to handle it, you should leave now." Surprisingly, nobody left. "I will not tolerate horseplay or roughhousing in my classroom." Ooh. She was not as bad as he thought she'd be. Unless...maybe she was doing this to make herself look better than she was in the hopes that sounding imposing and intimidating would fool people into thinking she actually _was_ imposing and intimidating? That was bad.

"I am going to pass out the syllabus for this year. It describes the material that we will be learning this year. Please have one of your parents sign it so I know they are aware of what you will be taught."

_Oh._ He had forgotten. The beginning of the school year came with paperwork that needed to be filled out in triplicate and sIGNED BY ONE'S PARENTS. He felt slightly sick.

Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy raised his hand.

"Yes?" asked-Jingmei-sensei, he supposed the proper form of address would be.

"What if we don't got parents?" he asked. Sasuke was immediately extremely appreciative of him.

"Well, er, your guardian, then," she said, blinking a bit. Sasuke wanted to roll his eyes. She was teaching a class made of people born right around the Kyuubi attack-many of whose parents had been ninja themselves- and she didn't think that there were people whose parents might be dead? He reevaluated his opinion of her. (_Those who can't do, teach_, his father had said once. Perhaps he was right.)

Did he _have_ a guardian, though? Anko, he guessed, except she wasn't his legal guardian. Hm. This...he probably needed to figure that out. Maybe she would know?

The syllabuses-syllabi-syllabodes? were passed out. It was all written in that stupid overly formal way letters to parents were. Probably to make the teacher look smarter. HMMM. Anyway, everything on here looked like stuff he already knew. Which...made sense, he supposed, but it was still kind of annoying.

On the back there was where the parent was supposed to sign. It actually did say parent/guardian.

What if he had Anko sign this, he wondered?

...what if he somehow got _Itachi_ to sign this? He'd heard the best birds at the post office could get mail to anyone anywhere in the world.

Was he seriously considering that?

And then suddenly a bunch more papers were in front of him. Oh dear. _Forms._


	20. Chapter 20

It was finally time for lunch. Sasuke was extremely glad.

He retrieved his bento box. It was an unadorned white box; he didn't want to see uchiwas staring at him while he ate. Sasuke waited for the other children to leave before he got up; he did not want to be trampled today. Or any day, really.

Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy had also not risen. Hunh. He always seemed hyperactive, one would think he'd be the first to get up. Actually, he looked decidely the opposite of hyper. He was sort of slumping against the desk, using his hand to push himself up. Maybe he was still thinking about how everyone but him had parents. Oh. That...well, now he felt sort of obligated to go and talk to him. To tell him he wasn't alone. But he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to deal with him. And Gao Jingmei (he was not feeling particularly sensei-using right now) had already exited the room, so there was no one to comment on his behavior other than Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy himself, who would probably not be believed if he mentioned anything to an adult.

But...

Steadying himself, he walked over to Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey. You alright?"

The kid looked at him with these enormous blue eyes and said, "Yeah, I guess. Just hungry. I...uh...forgot my lunch." Sasuke had a feeling that this was not the truth. And now he felt obligated to share his food, too. (...Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy had always been rather skinny, hadn't he?)

"Well, er-you can have some of mine, then."

"Really?" His voice sounded like-like such an occurence was unheard of, which was kind of odd, because Sasuke had seen children offer to share food with those who had forgotten theirs before. (Hadn't he seen parents shove their children away from Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy?)

"Uh, yeah, sure. And-uh-I'm Sasuke, by the way."

Weirdo Spiral Noodle Boy grinned. "Naruto."

Sasuke wondered absently what sort of parents named their child "Naruto", although, frankly, a lot of people in Konoha had weird names. It was like they opened the dictionary and threw a dart at it and whatever word it hit, well, that's Little Babby's name, now, honey!

"Perhaps-perhaps we should go outside. It's...rather stifling in here, isn't it, now?" he said, trying to be _charming _and _gentlemanly_ like Shisui had been. Shisui was just as smart as Itachi, really, except better, because he wasn't evil and also he acted...well, not like a normal person, no, but in a more tolerable way of not-normal.

Naruto looked faintly puzzled. Oh. Right. Prolly he didn't know what "stifling" meant. Should he explain? He always felt kind of dumb when people told him what words meant. Well...Naruto wasn't like him, really, though, was he?

"Stifling means it's all really hot and too closed in," he explained.

"Oh," said Naruto, not sounding at all embarrassed or anything. "Yeah, it is. I don't really _like _Jingmei-sensei, do you? She seems really mean." He started moving towards the door, so Sasuke followed.

"No, I don't like her either. I don't think she's as qualified as she's trying to make herself seem." Please let Naruto know what "qualified" means, Sasuke wished desperately.

"Do you mean, like, do you think she's, like...a fake ninja?" Naruto asked, sounding confused.

"Oh, I think don't think she's a fake ninja _per se_. I think she really did earn her hitai-ate. _But-_" and here he lowered his voice, in case anyone was listening and also to be cool and conspiratorial "I don't think she really ought to be teaching us. You said she seems "mean"? She's doing that intentionally so we'll behave so we won't report on her and her inability to teach us properly."

Naruto's eyes widened. "_Whoaa._ So...like...she's a real ninja, but just like...a bad one pretending to be good? Why?"

Sasuke wasn't sure, actually. Why would you want this job?

Suddenly Naruto's jaw dropped. "SHE'S AN ENEMY SPY!"

"Not so loud," Sasuke hissed. "Do you want them to know that you know?" He was rather proud of himself for putting forth a calm façade amidst this...extremely shocking information. Because Naruto was _right_. This changed everything. Augh! What if she decided to start, like, kidnapping people to bring back to her leader? Or worse, brainwashing people? He had to do something.

"We have to get to the bottom of this," he whispered.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, yeah. But can we eat first?"

Sasuke considered it. Well, but, hnn...he was really hungry.

"Okay," he replied, trying to smile kindly at Naruto. They wended their way out to the lawn where people ate when the weather was good.

The schoolyard was extremely full, since everybody was, apparently, eating lunch at the same time. Weird. Well, hm...there was a tree over there that nobody was near and it looked like it would provide decent shade. Sasuke walked over to it; Naruto practically _bounced_ behind him. What was he, five?

They sat down; Sasuke, cross-legged, and Naruto with his legs pulled up to his chest like he was afraid someone was about to throw a kunai straight into his heart or something.

He opened his bento box. It was not that much food; two rice balls (premade; he knew he would have just wasted rice had he tried to make them himself) and some edamame. And one pair of chopsticks.

Sasuke picked up a boiled soybean and held it out to Naruto. The kid (the _small_ kid) took it, and then...shoved the whole thing in his mouth. What.

"You're, uh, not supposed to eat the pod," he said, trying not to sound incredibly haughty but seriously, who didn't know that?

"Oh," said Naruto, shrugging absently. "I've never had this before. What's it called?"

"Edamame," replied Sasuke, faintly bewildered. "...What do you even eat?"

Naruto grinned, and my were his teeth white. "Ramen! And uh, like, candy and stuff."

"Your par-" Wait. His parents didn't make him eat vegetables because he didn't have parents. Right.

Naruto looked at him quizzically. "What were you saying?"

"Uh...so...about that conspiracy, yeah?"


	21. Chapter 21

"Yeah!," said Naruto, cheerfully. This was not a cheerful matter, Sasuke thought angrily.

"Think of the enemies of Konoha," he said, _sotto voce_, like people in the movies did.

"Uh..." Naruto looked faintly puzzled. Had he not paid any attention in history class? "Um...Iwa! Except she doesn't sound like she's from Iwa."

"You can learn to fake accents, you know." Then a terrible thought came upon Sasuke. "Wait. What if...what if she actually is from here, but she's being...mind controlled or blackmailed into working for some other village?"

"Or what if she's _willingly_ working for some other village?" said Naruto, eyes growing larger.

"Or what if her _parents_ were spies for some other village and they raised her to be allegiant to that village and now she's following in their path?"

The two boys looked at each other in horror.

"This is bad," said Naruto. "Real bad."

"Oh, this is more than bad," said Sasuke, trying to warp his voice into that silky tone Shisui used when he was telling you something important but secretive. "Our whole _lives_ could be at stake."

"What are we gonna do?" Naruto asked, his voice wobbly.

"I...I don't know," Sasuke said, even though he didn't like admitting not knowing but he really had no better answer. "I guess first we should find out whatever we can about her. But I'm not sure how to go about that."

"Yeah," said Naruto, looking off into the distance. "Look, everyone's going back inside. We probably should too."

They got up and walked back to the building. There were only two doors into the building from this side, so it took a while to get back in. Soon, though, they were back in the classroom. Just as they were about to sit down Naruto whispered "Thanks for the food, Sasuke," and Sasuke managed a half-smile back at him.

The rest of the day was uneventful. It was all blah, blah, blah, ninja this, honor that, maths this, proper something something something that, and so on. (Sasuke was aware he probably should be paying more attention, but: he really could not bring himself to care. Besides, why should she listen to an EVIL SPY OUT TO GET THEM ALL, right?)

Then finally the bell rang. Freeeeeedooom. He ran, ran so fast he almost knocked someone over but he couldn't take that room, with its childish posters and the faint smell of paint and permanent markers and everyone with their naïveté and ignorance and that _woman _and why was she wearing perfume if she was a _ninja _and oh oh that door up there was closed what was he going to do but then some guy opened it for him and screamed "Gotta go fast!" at him and then

he was outside in the fresh afternoon air, and it was beautiful.

Sasuke realized as soon as he had stopped that maybe he should have said something to Naruto after class, but he had to get out of there.

* * *

><p>"Oi, kid," said a rather familiar voice. Anko-sensei! What was she doing here?<p>

"Hello," he said, still a bit out of breath." "Where did you come from?"

"I was born in Konoha, surely you know that," she said. What? Oh. That's where she was from. Oh.

She grinned. "Well, I just got back from doing a quick mail run, and then I didn't have anything to do but then I heard some people talking about how they were so glad their little brats were back in school so I figured I'd come over here and wait for you. Anyway, how was your day?"

"Well..." should he tell her the whole ridiculous story? Would she think he was making it up? Chichi-ue would have, wouldn't he have? (Not Chichi-ue. Otou-san. _Itachi _only called him chichi-ue because he was pretentious and stiff and terrible. Except it didn't matter now, did it?) "Well, I think our teacher is evil."

Anko raised her eyebrows but displayed no other indication of surprise. "Oh?"

"Well, I think she's pretending to be a better teacher than she really is because she's not actually a teacher, she's an enemy spy who's going to make us all into little puppets for Iwa or something and also what do I do with these?" He shoved the forms in her hands.

She stared. "Uh, that's...quite an accusation, Sasuke." And then she looked at the pieces of paper. "What am I supposed to do with these?"

"Well, some adult has to sign them, so..."

Anko sighed. "Sasuke. I am not your guardian. I'm some random lady who occasionally shouts vaguely useful pieces of information at you. I can't sign these."

This angered the boy. "Then who can? Am I supposed to mail these to my brother?"

"Well, uh...you could do that, I guess. I'm not really sure. You could talk to your teacher? Wait, no, if she's, uh, "evil", that probably wouldn't go over very well."

"Hn," said Sasuke, contemplatively. It would be sort of amusing if Itachi showed up one day for some sort of parent teacher conference like thing if only to see Gao Jingmei's face. Hey...

"Let's go to the post office, then, I guess," he said.

So they went.

* * *

><p>The Konoha Post Office was a good solid stone building, with its name chiseled in at the top. Sasuke liked it. It felt so...imperious? Hm...well, it was a nice building, anyway. Birds swooped in and out, clutching both letters and thick parcels. How did they train them to do that? How did they transport really large things? Like what if you...ordered furniture out of a catalogue or something?<p>

Anko-sensei opened the door for him. Inside were...a lot of people. And really high ceilings.

"I guess you'll need an envelope," she said. "Hm...I think you can buy those at the front, actually."

Together they walked through the large building. On the right there was a giant row of little boxes – what were those for, anyway? On the left there were giant windows, giving one a vast view of the surrounding buildings through slightly tinted glass. A man walked forth, carrying a stack of boxes. Sasuke hoped they didn't fall over. Distantly, he could hear a woman telling a child not to touch that and more distantly still someone barking out "Next!"

Then, they were at...the front, he supposed, because there was a counter with people wearing uniforms behind it who were taking packages from people. Then he realized the line. It was _so long_.

"I wish we lived in a town that believed in having _more than one_ post office," muttered Anko. "I'm sure this ridiculous setup worked _great_, oh, _fifty years ago, _but we kind of have more than two thousand people now."

"How many people does Konoha have now?" Sasuke asked. Two thousand seemed like a _lot_, but the way she was talking made it seem like that was _nothing_ compared to the current population.

"Uh...like...I don't know, maybe forty five thousand? Fifty thousand?" Sasuke couldn't believe that. How did they all fit?

"You're lying," he said. Surely she was. Ten thousand he could maybe believe. Fifteen thousand if you assumed a lot of people lived in really small apartments or something.

"I am not," she said, glaring. "And if you don't believe me, the census is a matter of public record and you can go look up the most recent one." Census? What was that? Oh, yeah, that thing where they counted people. "Anyway, fifty thousand isn't even really that many. The capital of Hi no Kuni has a hundred thousand, and I've heard of a city that has nine million."

Nine million. How. How could that be? How could even a hundred thousand be?

"This is madness," he said.

"No, this is...DEMOGRAPHY!"

"What," said Sasuke, who by this point was extremely muddled in all ways.

"Oh, look, the line's moved!" said Anko altogether too cheerfully.

So it had. They were now perhaps a meter closer to the front.

"Why are there so many people here now than there were before?" he asked. "People living in Konoha, I mean."

"The country is hella lame, that's why," she replied. "Like...look at all the stuff we take for granted. How long does is take you to get to school-ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? In the country the only school might be an hour away. Or, like...electricity! I mean, we tend to think that everyone has electricity now, but a lot of people don't. People are tired of that backwater kind of life. And they want something more than what they had for their kids, I guess."

"But we had electricity and a school fifty years ago," he said. (They did have electricity fifty years ago, right?) Oh, good, the line was moving again and that woman who had been screaming about change of address forms or something had shut up.

She shrugged. "I don't know, kid. I'm a ninja, not a sociologist." What was a sociologist?

"Next!," called one of the postal employees, and Sasuke realized that _they_ were next. Finally.

The woman behind the counter was young, maybe twenty seven, and she had really big eyes (black eyes) and hair cut in that weird princess style (black hair) and she looked just like Itachi's ex-girlfriend, and why had his brother been dating his cousin, anyway, who _did_ that, and then he blinked, and the woman's dark hair was shining brown in the light and Sasuke was able to remind himself that his family did not have a monopoly on black hair.

"What can we do for you today?," she asked, smiling in a really fake way.

"We'd like to mail these, but we don't have an envelope, can we buy that up here?," asked Anko, and Sasuke really hoped the answer was yes because he didn't want to have start all over again.

"Of course," she replied, and took out a fairly large dull orange envelope. She put the papers inside. "And I assume you don't have stamps, either?"

Anko and Sasuke looked at each other. "No, sorry," said Sasuke, embarrassed, because come on, who didn't know mail required stamps?

"Well, that's all right. Where will you be sending this?"

"I don't know," said Sasuke, because really, Itachi could be anywhere. (Including right behind him, couldn't he?)

The woman sighed, and then regained her peppy outlook. "Do you know if it'll be going to someone in or outside Konoha?"

"Outside," said Anko. Sasuke really hoped so. "Oh, and we'd like return service, too."

"Ah," the lady said. "That's doable, of course, our birds are the best in Fire Country, but I just want you to know it'll be very costly." Then she pushed the envelope and a pen toward Anko. "Write the name of the recipient and the return address, please. Try to be as legible and big as you can." Anko then pushed it towards him. The return address was easy. But the name of the recipient? Of course he knew what it was, but writing it was hard. His hand was getting shaky. _No_. Using his left hand to steady his right, he slowly wrote his brother's name on the front and then passed it back across the counter.

She then put it on a...scale? It looked sort of like a scale. And his suspicions were confirmed when he saw small red numbers reading **56.7**, which made sense since it was just paper and the envelope.

"That will be 1026 ryo, please," said the woman, and Sasuke had to restrain himself from gaping. That was huge. That was ridiculous. No way he could afford that. But Anko-sensei just pulled out her wallet, which looked like it was made out of zebra print duct tape, and slapped the money down on the counter like it was nothing. Whoa. She must be so rich, he thought.

"Thank you. I can't give you a delivery time because you don't know the location of the recipient, but it should arrive within two weeks. Have a nice day!" And she smiled, again in a really fake way. And Anko-sensei smiled at him in a not fake way.


	22. Chapter 22

The air was crisp. The wind whipped through the trees, blowing the leaves that were just beginning to show signs of autumn to the ground. In the sky, one could see wisps of cirrus clouds; perhaps a signal of oncoming precipitation? He was glad for his cloak, but he wished it had a hood. Wet straw is highly unpleasant.

Where was his...traveling companion? He had much patience, but there were limits. His assignment was not complicated; how could it be taking him this long?

A hawk swooped above him. He paid it no mind; hawks may not have been the most common bird in this area, but they were not unheard of either. But then it swooped down to be right in front of him, and then he took notice.

It was carrying an envelope. A mail bird, then. But from whom? Jiraiya preferred to use toads to communicate, and while he supposed Leader-sama might wish to contact him, surely he would not use an easily intercepted bird to do so. There was no one that he could imagine would wish to send him something.

The bird was becoming agitated, so the young man took the envelope. In the center was written in neat, large black lettering the characters of his name: **うちはイタチ**. Hn. Anyone sending classified information would surely not be so idiotic as to put his name on it. And then he turned the envelope over, so he could open it, and he saw in slightly smaller writing the characters of another's name: うちはサスケ.

"What the fuck," thought the young man. The bird was still there. The sender had evidently paid for return service as well, then, so he might as well open it soon.

Inside were a number of pieces of paper. Perhaps it was death threats? That would be mildly entertaining—death threats written by an eight year old. As soon as he actually looked at the papers in question, however, he realized that was most certainly not the case. They were...school forms? Why was Sasuke sending him these? Why couldn't he fill them out himself?

Then he saw at the top of one of them the words "Dear Parent or Guardian" and realized with a sinking feeling that this was sort of kind of _his_ responsibility. How was he supposed to fill them out though, when he didn't have a pen (and why would he, really? In his line of work, the pen is _not_ mightier than the sword). Wait...was there one in the envelope? There was. That seemed to be displaying far too much foresight for Sasuke. This whole endeavor seemed to be a bit too advanced for Sasuke; had he ever even _been_ to the post office before? Some adult having assisted him seemed logical, but who was mad enough to help in mailing letters to a missing nin?

The hawk had begun to claw at him. He could ponder the details of the situation later. The information required seemed simple enough; he was sure even Sasuke knew what his address was, so why did it _have_ to be done by someone other than the student in question? Well, maybe they assumed a small child would not know the name of their pediatrician; that seemed reasonable enough. Nonetheless he had enough faith in Sasuke that he was confident his brother would have been able to figure it out eventually. When he reached the bottom, however, he saw the reason: there was a line with the words "Parent/Guardian Signature" printed next to it. Oh.

Should he sign this? Why not. It would be sort of amusing to show up to a parent-teacher conference. He suspected that the odds of that happening were fairly low, though, as he was sure that the teacher would realize he was neither Sasuke's parent nor guardian but in fact he evil older brother (who was only thirteen, anyway) and find someone else to stand in. Despite this Itachi wrote down his name. He then moved onto the next paper, which...was exactly the same as the previous one? He then faintly recalled from when he was still in school that many of these had to be filled out multiple times. It baffled him. Was this not an age of copy machines? For that matter, why did they _need_ multiple copies? Was interdepartmental communication in the school system really that atrocious? Considering the rest of the government, it probably was. (A fairly significant amount of people were convinced Konoha could have fully rebuilt after the Kyuubi attack using actual carpenters instead of twelve year olds if the government were not so incredibly wasteful. Itachi was skeptical, but it was undeniable that the administration had a lot of issues with bloat and redundancy.)

_No_, Sasuke didn't have allergies, _no_ he didn't need any medication, _no_ he didn't have glasses or hearing problems, _no_ he hadn't a concussion within the last six months...wait. He had knocked him unconscious, hadn't he? He should probably check yes on that box. Itachi really hoped that hadn't dealt Sasuke permanent brain damage. Madara had promised him the Tsukuyomi wouldn't, but Madara was more of a snake than any anaconda or python could ever hope to be, and his _own_ mind had seemingly been ravaged long ago.

His hand was now covered in ink; he hoped Kisame did not ask why. Hopefully the rain that seemed to be beginning to fall would wash it off. Had he completed all of the documents? He had. Itachi put them back in the envelope. He crossed out his name on the front and wrote in Sasuke's and did the reverse on the back; and then, because he was feeling sort of...mischevious?, he wrote as his address "Grass Country, Senlin Forest, Block 4, Tree 5," and while writing down one's location was the first thing one learns not do as a missing nin, he was confident Kisame would arrive and they could leave before this letter reached Konoha.

The young man handed the envelope back to the bird, who immediately took off in a whoosh of wings. The letter would be there within the week assuming no inclement weather or...other situations that could halt it. Absently he noticed one of its feathers had fallen out and landed on him; he smiled sadly, for he knew he would not soon come into posession of another thing from his home any time soon.

"Yo, sorry I took so long," said a tall, blue skinned man, who smelt of blood and sweat and steel.

"It is okay," replied Itachi. It was _not_ okay, but he did not care for arguing.

"I guess we should get a move on," said his partner. "Hey, did you happen to see a hawk carrying mail? 'Cause I did, and it's like, who would want to mail something _here_?"

Itachi did not answer.


	23. Chapter 23

"What does return service mean, anyway?," asked Sasuke as they exited the post office.

"The bird will wait for the recipient to read and reply to the letter and then take it back here," said Anko. "I figured you'd never get any of those papers back if I didn't pay for it."

"I guess so, but it would have been cooler if he used one of his crows."

What. His crows? Did that mean Itachi had a summoning contract? Where could he have gotten that from? Summoning contracts were usually either given to you by your teacher (and she was sure she would have heard about his genin teacher had they been someone important) or your family (and the Uchiha clan was known for having a thing with cats, but not with any sort of birds.)

"Where'd he get them from?," she asked, although somehow she had the feeling he wouldn't know.

Sasuke shrugged. "What, the crows? I don't know. I just remember once he used them to send something. How do you even train a bird to do that?"

"Well, uh...I'm not sure how the post office does it, but I suspect that your brother has a summoning contract, which means that he can summon crows from crow land which is for crows, and then gives them things so they do what he wants."

Sasuke stared at her. "I know what a summoning contract is. I'm not that dumb, you know. I just didn't think he would have one, because aren't they supposed to be incredibly rare?"

"You know, a lot of people think that, but they really aren't," she said cheerfully. "I mean, even I have one."

Sasuke's eyes went wide. Maybe she shouldn't have said that? "Really?"

"Yes, really. But don't ask me to show you, 'cause the snakeys get mad when I summon them without a reason."

"I think you're lying," said Sasuke, and she wanted to sic a python on him right then and there. But she did not. A+ for self control, Anko! "But I still want to know where Itachi got a summoning contract from. Who would give one to him? Does anybody _want_ him to be even more creepy?"

"You never know with people in this town," Anko replied, which was really, really, true. Orochimaru may have been the most obvious one, but he was not the only old man with too much power who wanted some young thing to give it to. Although some she couldn't imagine Itachi falling for such a thing. "Maybe he found the scroll in your clan's library."

"What?"

"Your...clan's...library? The room with books?"

"_I know what a library is. _I just...don't think we have one? Why would we? Is that a thing people do? 'Oi, coz, gimme all your books, we're makin' a collection!'"

Anko was floored. She had always assumed they'd had a library full of all the secrets of mankind. So had a lot of other people, she was pretty sure.

"Maybe he found it in a box of stuff in your house that had been passed down from some old relative that nobody had ever bothered to look through?," she said, weakly, because that was kind of dumb, but she was too shocked by this revelation of No Uchiha Library to come up with anything better.

Sasuke sort of looked like he wanted to press the library thing, but didn't. "I...maybe. There _is_ a lot of random stuff in the cellar. Hey, we could go down there and look for...uh...stuff. Uh."

"Sure," said Anko. Wait, a cellar? Like...a room underground the rest of the house? Who had that? The orphanage she had grown up in had had such a thing, but it was huge and needed a lot of storage space. The hospital had one too, and so did the vast administrative building that housed the majority of the government (she had heard people talk about "going to the basement", usually with trepidation, and as far as she could tell they were referring to something beneath the ANBU floor, which was semi-submerged), but aside from those, she knew of no buildings that had underground rooms. Hunh. Those wacky Uchiha.

Where was Sasuke even _going_? This was a ridiculously twisty route. They were seemingly going through every neighborhood of Konoha, until...

and there, gleaming in the sunlight, was a gate, and she knew (despite never having seen it before) that it was the gate marking the entrance of the world of the Uchiha.

She started to walk toward it, but Sasuke pulled her away. "No, that's not the way to go," he said. "This way." Suddenly she realized those dark spots on the concrete beyond the gate were not dirt.

"Here we are," he said, sliding open a door. "It's sort of dim at this time of day. Sorry about that."

"You...don't lock your doors?"

He looked at her, puzzled. "No, should I?" Yes, stupid, you should. Wait, did this door even _have_ a lock?

"Someone could come take your stuff otherwise, you know."

He shrugged. "I really don't think there's anything worth taking." Hunh. She had always assumed they had like...piles of jewels or something.

They took off their shoes. In Anko's apartment she only did that because, well, she always had and it seemed odd not to; but in Sasuke's house the floor was so immaculate that even walking around without slippers made her feel guilty. Except there were no slippers here for either of them to put on, as far as she could tell. It was kind of dark. Where was the light switch?

Wait, Sasuke had already started going somewhere in the house. "Aah, stop walking so fast or I'll get lost!," she thought. Quickly she ran after him. His destination was...the kitchen? That was kind of an odd place to put the entrance to the basement.

"Would you like something to drink?," he asked, and _oh_, he was trying to be hospitable. He was a _lot_ more polite than she was when she was his age.

"Uh, sure, thanks," she said. The kitchen was reasonably well lit by its windows, so she could see what sort of interesting things were in here. (...why did she assume even the Uchiha's _kitchens_ would be fascinating?) It was really rather ordinary. The refrigerator was bare, save for one magnet at the side, but on the top was a pile of photos and magnets and grocery lists. That was kind of an odd place to put them, especially since he'd surely have to stand on a chair to get to them. And on the counter was an ancient looking bucket. What could he possibly be doing with that?

"Oh, it looks like we're out of tea, how about some juice?," he asked, after having done a lot of rummaging in the cupboards.

"Uh, sure, thanks," she said again. There was something off about this whole thing, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. He opened the refrigerator and leaned _way _into it, and then managed to produce two small cans of pineapple juice. Sasuke tossed one to her. It had expired a _really_ long time ago. Like, six years ago. Well, she liked to live life on the edge, so – bottoms up, Anko-chan! Anyway, it seemed to taste fine, just a little metallic, and...oddly warm. Sasuke, meanwhile, was practically _inhaling_ his. Hunh.

"Hey, can we turn the lights on?," she asked, because it was still too dark for her liking.

"It won't work," he replied, looking embarrassed.

"Oh, did your bulb burn out? If you give me a new one I can fix that for you." She felt badly for him, because she really doubted anyone had ever taught him how to change a lightbulb, and now he was supposed to try and do it himself.

"No, there's no electricity," he said. What. Were the Uchiha really that traditional? But then why would they even have lightbulbs? Wait, then how would his refrigerator work?

"Why?"

Now he looked even more embarrassed.

"I don't have money to pay the electrical bill." Oh. That...she was not expecting that. What happened to his parents' money? Should she ask? Asking felt like it would be really awkward, though.

"What about your...inheritance?" She had had a lot of opinions, mostly negative, about Uchiha Fugaku, but he didn't seem like the kind of man who was secretly squandering all his family's money on gambling or something.

He shrugged. "I don't know where my parents kept their money. It's okay, really, I have...like...candles and flashlights and stuff."

She really didn't want to go into insensitive territory here, but it was for his own good, really. "What about the executor of their wills? Like the person who was supposed to figure that sort of thing out?"

"Dead." Oh. She really should have expected that.

"Well, then, uh...did they have any...non-Uchiha friends that might know?"

He looked contemplative. "Tsuneoki-san!," he exclaims. "He's this guy who's missing a leg and has a ton of scars and always seemed to want to eat me but he was in our house sometimes so he might know. I mean, I...I'm pretty sure he's not an Uchiha."

Anko had never heard of anybody with that name and that description. Maybe he was really old and rarely went outside? "Why don't you try to find him soon, then?"

"Yeah, yeah, I guess." He opened a drawer and pulled out two flashlights. "Now onto...adventuring!" He awkwardly grinned and handed one to her. She attempted to grin back. And then he was off again, and she again had to run to catch up with him. And then he just _stopped_ and she almost knocked into him. Did he really have to do that?

Ah, here was a very Uchiha room. _Washitsu_. There was a lone uchiwa on the wall and a kotatsu in the center with pillows around it, but those were the only things inside it. It seemed very dreary. And it, too, seemed like a very odd place for an entrance to a basement, but what did she know?

Sasuke walked over to one of the tatami mats and...pulled it up? And then there was a _ladder_ visible.

"C'mon," he said, and soon his small body had disappeared into the abyss. She climbed down after him. The ladder was made of _really_ rusty wrought iron, and it worried her. What if it disintegrated before they got back up or something?

It was very dark; where they were there was a small amount of light from the room above, but much beyond them it was pitch black. She turned on her flashlight. The light was rather weak; she could see only a few feet in front of her. Sasuke was going somewhere, but where? He wouldn't be able to see anything.

And then, everything was bright. Whoa. How did that happen.

"You know, I'm not sure why we have this random battery powered lamp/alarm clock/toaster in the basement, but it sure is useful!," proclaimed Sasuke cheerfully. In his arms was a _very_ strange looking contraption. How could something be a lamp, an alarm clock, and a toaster all at once? Why would you make such a thing? Why would you _buy_ such a thing?

"If you knew that was down here, why did we need flashlights?"

He shrugged. "In the movies whenever they go down to look at things in dark basements they always have either flashlights or torches. And I don't think we have any torches and anyway, you shouldn't have open flames inside."

"So, because you thought it was cool, basically, hunh?"

He shrugged again. "Yeah, basically."

Anko looked out at the room. Whoa. It was _huge_. And there was so much stuff. Poorly made shelves held all manner of things, there were stacks and stacks of random things everywhere, and assorted furniture was awkwardly in the middle of things.

"Wait!," exclaimed Sasuke. He then proceeded to...turn around and run back up the ladder? Should she follow him? And he had taken the...lamp thing too, so now she was once plunged into almost darkness. Anko wasn't like...scared of the dark or anything, but come on, anyone would have been worried about some Uchiha ghost jumping up on them down here, wouldn't they?

"Here, take this," he said, from...above? She turned toward the ladder. He was holding the lamp thing towards her. She awkwardly grasped it; it was surprisingly heavy. There was a rickety table on her right, so she set it down. Hopefully it wouldn't collapse.

"Here, take this too," he said, handing her...her sandals? Well, um, okay? She took those too. And then he came down the ladder, holding...his sandals?

"Sorry," he said. "I'd forgotten how awful the floor was down here. There might be broken glass or something, so..."

She was sort of impressed he'd realized that might be an issue, but...suddenly an image of a mother, long dark hair and long apron, yelling at her son to "_put your shoes on while you're in the cellar, or you'll cut yourself_" arose in her mind, and she wondered what that woman would think of Anko standing here.

"You know, why don't you bring this upstairs?" she asked, pointing to the lamp/alarm clock/toaster. "It would surely be more useful there than there."

"It's too bright. Also it's really ugly." She couldn't deny that. It was fluorescent orange with green polka dots that looked like they had been painted by someone who didn't know what they were doing. "Actually, I think this may have been someone's science fair project, but I have no idea how it wound up here."

"I have a feeling you don't know how _most_ of this stuff wound up here. It'd be sort of impressive, really, if your b-Itachi found a summoning contract down here, considering how much there is."

"Yeah," he said absently. "I'm not-where do we even _start_ with this?"


End file.
